


The Youxia Bond

by Narsil



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:06:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 15
Words: 38,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Narsil/pseuds/Narsil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having refused to rejoin the Jedi Order and seeking refuge in the backwaters of the Outer Rim from the bounty hunters on her trail, Ahsoka Tano encounters a Force-user with a <i>very</i> distant past and an equally uncertain future. At least that's something that the newcomer shares with the rest of the galaxy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Endings and Beginnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In honor of a new Star Wars movie, my first Star Wars story. For those that follow my other stories, I know, I said I wasn't going to start any more stories until I finish off most of the ones I already have. In my defense, I've been inspired by some fine fanfic and the thought of the new movie (which I'll actually see in a few days). And also in my defense, except for today this chapter hasn't taken any of my usual writing time from my other stories, I've only worked on it after finishing my usual daily quota and if that quota wasn't met, then this story didn't get worked on at all — and that's how I plan to continue. Still, while I haven't read all that much Star Wars fanfic, I like to think that I've come up with a rather different way of handling the problem of Dark Side temptation, we'll have to see.
> 
> Also, at the moment the rating is a warning of what's to come more than anything, and will probably go up along with additional archive warnings, fandoms, categories, relationships and characters as they become appropriate. But be warned that this story will eventually include F/F and possibly M/F/F. If that isn't your cup of tea, you'll want to avoid this.
> 
> As a not-so-side note, while I've seen the prequel movies, the Clone Wars movie, and own and am watching the five seasons of the Clone Wars cartoon, I am fine from finished with that last. There's Wookieepedia, of course, but if anyone notes continuity/setting errors let me know and I'll do some more research and perhaps update the story.

Jenni stepped through the permanently irised open door, shook the snow off her sleeping bag-jacket, and brushed off her jeans, stamped the snow and mud off her hiking boots, then started forward again, twisting her head to play the beam from her flashlight-headband about what had been the foyer of the Youxia central headquarters, nostalgia from her and the two women and two men following her — the other four Dancers of her Bond — mixing until she couldn’t tell where hers began and theirs ended. She was a little surprised — true, there was dust everywhere, but she’d expected at least a few bodies. It may have been over four years since the neutron bombs had wiped it clean of life inside and out and ended a thousand years of peace at the same time, but there should have been clothed skeletons at least. _Maybe the Slaves didn’t want decomposing corpses stinking up the place while they ransacked it_.

A thousand years, while the League had ended the suffering of the poor if not poverty itself, while mankind had terraformed Mars and then Venus, had even reached out to the nearest stars with the newly-invented warp drive. All gone, replaced by death, chaos and terror as the Void Slaves and their secretly armed allies seized control of an Earth that had forgotten how to use the arms it didn’t have.

 _At least the running will be over, if not the way we’d hoped_ , Jenni thought, her nostalgia morphing into grief at the memory of the long months on the run stretching into years as propaganda broadcasts had displayed the final battles of bond after bond that hadn’t been gathered in the Mountain for the holiday celebrating Ming Song’s discovery of the connection to the Tao, and how to both directly guide and be guided by it. Those bonds that hadn’t become as skilled as her own bond at muting their presence in the Tao before being caught and turned into one more blow to the morale of a conquered Earth.

Feeling the concern coming from her bondmates, she shook off the grief. _Remember, whatever happens, The Party never ends_. Taking a deep breath and shifting her backpack to a (temporarily, after over a week of hiking) more comfortable position, she sent, “ _Come on, people, no time for sightseeing. I can’t imagine the Void Slaves don’t have Central under observation, so however isolated the Mountain might be we’re on the clock. Let’s give them a proper welcome_.”

Grim amusement came back, and the five Dancers broke into a trot toward the elevator banks; with no power the elevators wouldn’t run, of course, but it would be faster to cut through the floors and make their own way down the shafts. And they could leave a few surprises along the way.

/\

The others were just laying down the last circles of crushed crystal-permeated paint as Jenni sorted out crystals they’d gathered from the hidden storerooms (and hadn’t they been relieved that the Void Slaves hadn’t found them) when a soft alarm went off by their stacked backpacks — the first of their booby traps had gone off. Everyone paused for a moment and looked up, then returned to their tasks at perhaps a slightly faster pace than before, just shy of hurrying.

A few minutes later Jason sent, “ _I’m done!_ ” A chorus of agreement from the other three followed.

Jenni leaned back on her heels. “ _I_ think _the large crystals I have will do the job. Everyone switch circles and double-check the work, and I’ll get them laid out._ ” As the other four carefully double-checked their work she inserted a large crystal in the depression at the center of each spiral and at the cardinal points of the circle inlaid into the floor in the center of the room, a _huge_ crystal at the center, and then started double-checking her own circle for any breaks from four years of neglect — nothing.

The room shook as the _second_ booby-trap went off.

“ _Okay, we’re out of time. Drop what you’re doing and get into position._ ”

The four knelt at the open ends of the spirals they’d painted, and as Jenni sat half-lotus style and swept her headband’s light around the room one last time ... but this time focused on the people she loved rather than the room itself: tall, red-headed Henrik who’d been ‘gifted’ the nickname of ‘the Hammer’ by the girls of the Bond, and not because of his blacksmithing hobby; bronze Kaulana, he of the gentle hands and easy Island smile; almond-eyed Yua, the eager, playful one, with a tendency to leave nip marks; and raven-haired Sacagawea, who got as much pleasure from a night of cuddling as wild heights of passion. Yes, their bond had had a good run — centuries long as Dancers had cycled through, even if only Jenni and Henrik had been been members when the Void Slaves struck, and Jenni only just barely — but it was over now. If David and Usagi’s calculations were correct, in a few moments it would be over for every Flame that burned bright in the current of the Tao. _Well, except for those Buddhists that moved to the Asteroid Belt so they could stare at their navels, anyway. But hopefully with the Void Slaves gone the people of Earth will be able to deal with their non-Awakened followers_.

Breaking the silence for the first time, Jenni said, “See you on the other side.” Then she took a deep breath, and stopped muting her presence in the Tao as for the first time in four years she opened herself fully to the heartbeat of the Universe. For a moment she feared being swept away by the sheer force of the life the pattern of crushed crystal paint focused on her, but she had always had an intuitive feel for the currents and now she rode them, gathered them, poured them into the large crystal at her feet. It in turn accepted her gift, amplified it, and divided it between the four cardinal point circles around her. The others reeled under the onslaught but managed to rally and feed the spirals. Those spirals amplified the power they received even more, and the four floods hammered into the crystals at their heart and transformed into the dark Yin of the Void before exploding outward.

To Jenni’s shock, the world went white instead of black.

/oOo\

_A hundred thousand years later, give or take a few centuries:_

As the undulating, spinning, multi-white tunnel of hyperspace collapsed to streaks of pure light then settled to a starscape, Ahsoka Tano breathed a sigh of relief. Wherever she was, she’d made it! From the sounds the hyperdrive had been making, she hadn’t been certain that would happen and hadn’t dared drop out of hyperspace into the empty void between stars to make repairs the tramp freighter might not have parts for, or the fuel to get her back into hyperspace and to the nearest inhabited planet. She hadn’t exactly had the time to do a survey of available resources before making her unannounced departure from whatever mid-Rim world she’d stowed away to after the first bounty hunters attacked her, and the fuel gauge was distressingly low. She didn’t think that whatever was bedeviling the engines was the result of shoddy maintenance, not from the neat, eat-off-the-floor clean state in which the freighter’s previous owner had kept the cockpit and common room, but the open panels and hanging wiring told the ship’s age and keeping it running properly had probably been a near-full-time job for its captain.

Her mood darkened at the thought of that captain, the male human that had stepped into her fight with the _second_ band of bounty hunters to find her — the ones that hadn’t underestimated her because she no longer had her lightsaber thanks to her refusal to rejoin the Jedi Order, and were trying to kill her rather than going for a capture. His interference had cost him his life even if it saved hers, though he’d lived long enough to tell her which bay his ship occupied and the access codes to give her access. She just wished she knew his name, he hadn’t been carrying any identification. _Maybe there’ll be something identifying him in his room, I’ll have to check first thing once I land this hunk of junk. What if he has a family?_ The young Togruta had seen deaths in the two years she had been Skywalker’s padawan, Jedi and clone troopers she had liked and respected among them, but the free trader had been one of the civilians she was supposed to protect, not be protected by!

Shaking off the dark thoughts, she turned her attention to the planet she was rapidly approaching, named Trey according to the nav-charts. It was the best choice when she had compared the nav-charts she downloaded from Traffic Control to those stored in the ship’s nav-comp, barely registering on the download beyond a name and location on the official list but _very_ well mapped on the ship’s personal list — which meant she could arrive in less than a day, but anyone making a straight jump on her trail might take a week or more. And why would they? It was a barely settled Outer Rim backwater, one the dead free trader had probably been able to make a living off of partly because his detailed nav-charts significantly cut his travel time and so operating costs, but mostly because no one else saw the point in challenging him for the market. _Hopefully, his desire to keep his monopoly extended to not letting anyone back in civilization know where his goods were coming from_.

Realizing that her thoughts had again drifted back into the same bleak rut they had worn in the long hours she had occupied the pilot’s seat, she refocused out the cockpit window to look over the planet growing ever larger: plenty of clouds, a large majority of the surface covered by oceans; most of the land one massive continent that mostly lay in the northern hemisphere, though it was narrow in spots that would probably be underwater if the ice sheet that covered much of the northern hemisphere wasn’t so extensive. From the green _not_ a desert world where it wasn’t ice, thankfully, that meant she’d have more time to stay away from locals while she figured out what she was going to do next.

 _And speaking of locals, I’d better find out where they’re located so I_ can _stay away from them_. She brought up the ship’s database and was just beginning to look for a map of the settlements when she paused. Something ... was different ... cleaner? Fresher? All her life, she had heard the Jedi Knights and Masters that had trained her cohort speak of the ... the _haze_ of the Dark Side that had clouded the Force, that had them striking at shadows even before the Battle of Geonosis and the beginning of the war. There had been times that she had thought they were making excuses for their failures. No longer, as she swept toward Trey and the clean, clear, beating heart of the Life of an entire planet wrapped itself around her. Not even her visits to the Crystal Caves on Ilum had felt like this. _And look at those ice caps! And_ — she hastily glanced at the scattered dots of small settlements on the database’s map — _it’s practically empty, what would a clean_ Coruscant _be like!?_

She shook off the thought, she’d have time to investigate once she was on the ground. _Let’s see, no hails from any kind of traffic control, no surprise there, and ... no landing beacons. I guess they expect you to know where you’re going_. (That wasn’t really a surprise, either — a place this small and out of the way in the Outer Rim would be vulnerable to pirate and slaver raids, and the first place any raiders would land would be any settlement large enough to need, and be able to afford, a landing beacon.) _So, somewhere rugged enough that there shouldn’t be anyone around, and close enough to a major settlement that I can walk there in a few days if I have to. But hopefully there’ll be some kind of speeder bike onboard_.

She started looking over the various settlements, pulling up what data there was on them in the computer (not much), but her eyes kept wandering back to a spot inland on the northeastern part of the world continent. It was some of the most rugged terrain on the planet, and high enough about sea level that its center had acquired its own covering of ice separate from the northern and southern ice packs. It was also very far from any settlements, there was no way she was walking out of there. But while she hadn’t felt the Force pulling on her like this very often she could recognize it for what it was — something down there was _important_ , to her if no one else.

With a sigh, she finally brought the freighter to a halt in relation to the planet. She was going to have to investigate the ship’s hold, see if there _was_ a speeder bike, and enough power cells that she could get to what passed for civilization if she couldn’t lift the ship once she landed.

/\

The speeder bike slowly coasted to a halt, and Ahsoka simply sat on it as she huddled in the blanket she’d pressed into service in lieu of a coat and stared up at the mountain, her breath cloudy in the cold mid-day air. The mountain was a steep, rugged, naked rocky spire, with glaciers on each flank like a scarf draped over a pair of shoulders, apparently empty of life except for a few flyers high in the sky. Whatever was pulling at her lay at the foot of the left-hand glacier, and like the larger (relatively) flat spot where she had left the freighter, this looked like the closest flat spot where she could park the speeder bike. She had no idea what could be there, hidden in this most desolate area of a backwater planet, but whatever was up there was still calling to her. It reminded of some lines of a poem she’d read once, before the war when she’d dreamed of exploring the Unknown Regions: ‘Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges — Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!’

“Well, I guess I’m walking from here.” Swinging a leg over the back of the bike, she dropped to the ground and pulled off the blanket, then untied the backpack of supplies she’d put together and slung it on her back before rewrapping the blanket around her. She made sure the blanket didn’t cover the blaster she’d found onboard and was now strapped to her hip, then she pressed the off switch for the repulsorlift so the bike settled to the ground. Besides not knowing how long she would be gone and so needing to conserve power, the bike was like the freighter — lovingly maintained but _way_ too old — and she didn’t trust the repulsorlift to hold the bike’s position in any kind of wind. As ready as she could be, she started up the mountain slope.

Hours later, a stunned Ahsoka turned off the hand light that she’d used to make her way deep into the mountain. The crevasse she’d found at the base of the glacier and the cracks in its wall had looked natural, but the room she’d found deep in one of those cracks with one wall sheered away leaving it open to the outside air, was clearly sentient-formed — a complex carved out of the heart of the mountain. And from the dirty streaks of ice running down the polished stone of the walls she’d passed as she carefully made her way deep into the mountain, squirming around collapses and backtracking from the occasional crevasse, up until recently the complex had probably been buried by the glacier.

And now she stood in an ice-free room buried deep in the heart of the mountain, a room where her hand light was unnecessary ... because it was brightly lit by a huge, slowly spinning oval mass of what she suspected was the Force so concentrated that it was made visible, coruscating with every color imaginable, reaching from floor to ceiling.

And even as that pure concentration of the Force overwhelmed her Force-sense, leaving her limited to her physical senses, still she could feel the pull toward it. She hesitated for long moments, before finally stepping forward and slowly reaching out a hand upraised and flattened.

As she approached, the colors bleached away from a spot on the oval mass and a face swam into view — a Human female face, young, bracketed by pure white hair shot through with streaks of blue in a pattern eerily similar to Ahsoka’s montrals and lekku waving about her head as if she was submerged in liquid.

Ahsoka hesitated again, her hand a few centimeters from the surface of the coruscating pillar. Still feeling the pull — the _need_ — she took a deep breath and thrust her hand forward into the swirling mass.

For a split-second the entire pillar of energy flashed clear to reveal a slim Human female slightly taller than Ahsoka dressed in a form-fitting shirt and pants and an open heavy coat, and Ahsoka instinctively spread her arms to catch the floating woman now falling forward just before the room plunged into darkness and the woman’s weight slammed into her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit of poetry Ahsoka remembers is from Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The Explorer."


	2. Discoveries

Palpatine finished rereading the news article from Milagro that had been flagged by his news filter, then rose from his seat at the desk in his working office and strode to the office’s clear wall to stare out from his point in the highest tower on the planet at the scattered lights of a Coruscant night. The capital city planet of a galaxy-spanning Republic never slept, of course, but, biological imperatives being what they are, the tempo did slow down with the fall of night. Not that he was really in the mood for ‘Coruscant stargazing’. (The light pollution meant the sky never really got completely dark, just a very deep blue, but there was still the artificial beauty of the semi-random light show put on by those parts of the towers below him still occupied and awake, and the multi-layered traffic lanes that passed between them.)

A world along the Corellian Run just shy of the Outer Rim border, there was nothing particularly significant about Milagro — certainly nothing to draw the attention of the Chancellor of the Republic. However, it was the world where the mercenary gang hired by _Darth Sidious_ to pursue a certain former Padawan had met their deaths.

The _second_ such band, actually, and what had been a simple case of cutting off a loose end and perhaps furthering the estrangement between Anakin Skywalker and the Jedi Council with news of his Padawan’s death was becoming more serious. And Palpatine didn’t know why.

Everything _seemed_ to be going well — Jedi after Jedi had fallen in the war; the Jedi that survived were mostly scattered throughout the Republic fighting alongside their future executioners; the military he would need to hold on to power when he was declared Emperor was growing as the war continued, and the news released to the Republic’s sheep subtly played up that military’s accomplishments while undercutting the Jedi’s reputation; the Hunters that he had tossed a few fragmentary Dark Side techniques moved about in the shadows eliminating possible future threats as they gained the experience they would need to form the core of his future Inquisitors; and the Jedi Council was flailing about in the mists of the Dark Side that Darth Sidious had immersed them in, trying to find the elusive Sith Master and unknowingly sowing the seeds of their own destruction as their continuing alienation of Skywalker and his ‘friendship’ with Palpatine allowed the Sith Master they couldn’t find to further sink his hooks into his future apprentice. Yes, all was going as he had foreseen.

But then the mercenary gang he’d tasked with capturing Ahsoka had failed, she’d temporarily vanished, and Darth Sidious’s visions of the approaching glorious future had become ... fuzzy — slightly indistinct, as glorious as ever but not quite _there_. Then a short time ago those visions had cleared once again, but he still felt as if something was off, somehow, a piece missing along with the Padawan.

And now the news that his second attempt on Ahsoka had failed.

_More mercenaries would both be pointless and risk exposure. I cannot order Darth Tyranus to take up the hunt — his persona as ‘Count Dooku’ is too important to my plan’s culmination, even if he were in position to quickly resume the pursuit he would be missed. It will have to be one of my Hunters_.

Decision made, Palpatine turned back to his desk to bring up his database, to review his Hunters’ locations and missions and determine which was in position and could be most easily spared.

/oOo\

The trip back to the freighter was a nightmare. Ahsoka was actually both skilled and powerful for her age, even as a newly-minted (if somewhat older) padawan she had been able to reach out with the Force and pull down an entire wall (with an empty window to supply a hole for Skywalker, and hadn’t that been fun?). But the burst of effort that had required was a far cry from using the Force to carry an unconscious body behind her as she made her way back to the surface, for _hours_. Then there had been getting both of them on a speeder bike she wasn’t certain could handle the weight, and the long cold trip down the mountain. (The Human’s coat was thankfully _much_ better protection than Ahsoka’s blanket, she hadn’t had to worry about the patient the Force had led her to dying of hypothermia without her realizing it — not that that didn’t stop her from reaching out to sense the limp life tied to her back every few minutes.)

She was _very_ happy when the freighter came into view.

She was also happy that her unnamed benefactor had taken especial care with medical equipment and supplies — as lovingly maintained as the rest of the ship and much newer. No bacta tank, of course, not even an emergency one, and when she undressed her (frowning slightly at the primitive fastenings on the clothes), her patient didn’t have any outward injuries needing bacta bandages. Still, to be safe, as soon as she had the Human wrapped in a blanket and laid out on the couch in the common room she gave her a bacta injection for any internal injuries she might have.

Everything done that she could do for the moment, she sat at the game table and laid her head down for a moment’s rest.

/\

Jenni’s eyes snapped open, staring up at the metal-paneled wall that curved up above her. It certainly wasn’t the Heaven she’d been expecting, or even any heaven that she’d ever heard of. And if the Buddhists were right (or many of the Buddhists, anyway) and those not reborn merged into Nirvana, she wouldn’t be aware of anything, at all.

Instinctively, she reached out, sending, “ _Hey gang, what’s going on?_ ”

Nothing. Not just no reply, the joy/grief/whimsy/determination/anger/love of her Bond was gone, — she was alone in the Dark of her mind.

She bolted upright, looking around wildly only to find herself alone in a room the like of which she’d never seen before: small, rounded corners, round doorways in three walls, a built-in couch she had been lying on along the wall without a doorway, a seat in the corner on the other side of the doorway at a console with a dark screen and a scattering of lights above it, and in the other corner across from another round doorway another table and several seats — and one seat taken by a red-skinned girl, a white-and-blue headpiece on the head she was lifting from the table. Jenni instinctively reached out, to get a read of who she was dealing with, and froze in shock.

The girl she was sharing a room with wasn’t human.

Jenni scrambled backward along the couch toward the corner away from the alien. “Who are you!? _What_ are you!? Where am I!? _What happened to my Bond!?”_

But she knew what had happened to them: they were dead like she should be, and as that reality crashed down on her she curled up against the corner on the couch and began to cry.

/\

Ahsoka stared at the crying Human female, trying to work through what had just happened. There had been a wave of shock powerful enough to disturb her sleep and she’d lifted her head to find her patient looking around wildly. That was understandable, she’d never been on this freighter before, but why had she panicked when she saw Ahsoka? It wasn’t like they’d ever met before. And what language had she been speaking? She was a Human on a colony world, she should be speaking Basic!

_... just how long_ was _she asleep in that Force vortex?_

_What do I do? She needs comforting, but if we don’t share a language_ ... Then she remembered the head of a protocol droid she’d seen in a case of miscellaneous spare parts she’d seen during her search of the ship. If she could rig up a battery pack —

A few minutes and a quick search in the hold, and she’d found a battery pack with a bit of a charge left. She _thought_ she’d worked out which of the wires in the droid’s neck stump she needed so attaching the pack’s lead should activate it instead of frying every circuit it had left....

She carefully clipped the lead into place, pressed the ‘on’ button, and sighed with relief when the head’s eyes lit up and it spoke with in a pleasant female voice.

“Hello, I am D-FN8, sentient-cyborg relations. How may I ... Oh my, what happened to my body!?”

/\

Jenni jerked when a gentle hand gripped her shoulder, then lifted and shifted her so she was half-on a lap — the alien’s, from the red skin tone she could see through cracked eyelids. And another hand was gently stroking her hair as the alien murmured something in (naturally) no language Jenni had ever heard the like of. She focused on the alien, and gasped — she had rarely met a Dancer whose Flame burned so brightly, more than enough that she could sense and manipulate the currents of the Tao without the aid of living crystals. For a moment fear flashed through her, but then she sensed the alien’s sympathy and concern washing over her. She twisted to throw an arm around the waist by her head and buried her face in a bare orange stomach, and sobbed.

She finally ran out of tears, and sat up to wipe at her cheeks. “Thanks, I needed that. You don’t speak Anglic by any chance, do you?”

“Oh my, that is a fery obscoor language.” Jenni twisted in shock — there was nothing living there! — then relaxed at the artificial head like a robot from a scifi movie, sitting on top of a small black box on the table where the alien had been sleeping. She hadn’t sensed anything because there was nothing living to sense. The robot head continued, “Yam D-FN8, sentient-cyborg relations. Mistress Ahsoka has tasked me to translate.”

“Uh ... hello ... Defenate.” She paused, surprised to hear Defenate speak in another language using her voice. _Oh, right, ‘translate’!_ It had been centuries since the League had needed to use translators, Anglic had long since become the unofficial common language of Earth’s people and its colonies, but she remembered reading about their use by the United Nations that had preceded the League. And they’d been people, of course, not robots.

Turning to face the alien sitting on the couch beside her, she repeated, “Hello. My name is Jennifer Allston, but you can call me Jenni. Where am I?”

The alien replied, and Jenni did her best to pretend the robot speaking with the same voice was actually the alien. “Hello, my name is Ahsoka Tano. Yoor on ... my freighter, but I found you inside the mount weer parked below.”

“Mount? Mountain? The Mountain! Maybe ... do you have a map?”

“Of course.” Ahsoka rose to walk over to the table where Defenate was placed. Moving the robot head to another chair, she sat down and fiddle with controls Jenni couldn’t see for a few minutes until a hologram of a planet sprang into existence that instantly had Jenni’s complete attention.

“Weer here ...” Ahsoka was saying, but Jenni ignored the dot of light as she rose to her feet and walked over. Her finger traced the white that covered the top of the globe. “Is that all ice?”

“Yes, is an ice age. At least I think so.”

Jenni’s finger ran along the ice that had swept over the Bering Strait joining Asia to North America, then circled the patch of ice that covered what had been Tibet before resting on the dot of light on the easternmost edge. “Good thing you found me when you did or the ice would have rolled over me, and who knows how long it would have been before it retreated.”

Ahsoka stiffened, and Jenni turned to focus on the stunned silent alien staring at her wide-eyed. “What is it?” Jenni asked, worry suddenly twisting her gut.

“Jenni ... the ice is retreating. You _were_ covered.”

“It —” Jenni whirled back to the globe, staring at the vast expanse of white. If that wasn’t the maximum advance ... She whispered, “How large is the population?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think anyone does,” Ahsoka replied. She fiddled with the table’s controls, and the globe began to turn as a thin scattering of lights appeared across its surface, mostly along major rivers toward the equator. “These are all the settlements in the database, maybe ... a few hundred thousand settlers?”

_A few hundred thousand!_

Jenni toppled forward into the hologram, Ahsoka just fast enough to keep her from cracking her chin on the far edge of the table.

Ahsoka stared down at the Human girl for a long moment before levitating her up and back toward the couch. “Defenate, that language she was speaking, how old is it?” she asked as she made Jenni as comfortable as she could.

“No one knows, mistress,” the robot head replied. “It is related to Anguc, an ancestral Human language of several Core worlds that argue over which world spoke it first. It is now spoken only by scholars that argue as much as the worlds do.”

“ ‘Related’?”

“Yes, mistress. I was forced to ... approximate the translation of a number of the words she used.”

“ ‘Approximate’ — does that mean ‘guess at’?”

“As you say, mistress.”

Ahsoka grinned for a moment at the protocol droid’s prissy, almost offended tone, before sobering again as she refocused on Jenni. _She speaks a dead language. She was trapped in a Force vortex for so long that an ice age covered up and then uncovered her location. She is so shocked by the number of inhabitants that she faints_. The picture that was being painted was bizarre, so bizarre she could hardly believe it, but ...

She sat back down at the game table and started typing.

/\

Jenni slowly came awake to find herself staring at the same metal-paneled wall curving above her as before, and again instinctively reached out for her Bond to find nothing but the Dark. She pressed her eyes closed to fight back the tears, then sat up and wiped away the few that had escaped. _Am I going to go through that_ every _time I wake up from now on?_

She sat up and looked around for a distraction, and found the orange-skinned alien — _Ahsoka, her name is Ahsoka_ — sitting at the table with the rotating hologram of Earth again, watching her. The young ... _girl? Is she_ really _female, or is that just human preconceptions talking?_ Whichever, Jenni took comfort from Ahsoka’s sympathy rippling through the Tao.

But however strong her sympathy, the question she asked through Defenate took Jenni’s breath away for a second. “Jenni, when you were trapped in the Force vortex, how many people lived on this planet?”

“Trapped in a what?” Jenni waved off the question. “Never mind, later. When I should have died, there were as many souls as the planet could sustain, approximately ten billion.”

“Ten billion ... yes, that’s ... a lot of people.” Ahsoka waved a hand through the rotating hologram. “Yoor _sure_ this is your home planet?”

Jenni pushed to her feet and walked over, and started poking at land masses. “North America. South America. Africa. Eurasia. Australia. Yes, I’m sure.”

Ahsoka slumped back in her seat and stared at the globe, her sympathy washed away by pure wonder. “Scholars back in the Core are going to go _crazy_ when they find out about this,” she muttered, then grinned up at Jenni. “This planet rotates once in just over twenty-four hours. And it slowing slightly, thanks to the moon — ‘suming the rate of slowing is constant, it would have been _exactly_ twenty-four hours around ninety thousand years ago. This might be the Human homeworld!”

“Wait, you mean there are _humans_ —” She waved at the ceiling. “— out there?”

“Oh, yeah, trillions of ‘em, planet after planet full. Can’t go anywhere without running into ‘em. This planet is pretty far from the Core Worlds, it was colonized — maybe _re_ colonized? — just a few centuries ago, I think.”

Jenni collapsed into the other chair by the table to stare at the rotating globe, so stunned she lost her focus on Ahsoka’s eddy in the Tao and was again alone in her own head. “Wow.” _Maybe ... maybe we weren’t such failures, after all_.

After awhile she shook herself free of her own wonderment at what she’d just learned and looked over at Ahsoka. “So, now what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I came across ‘Coruscant stargazing’ in _And None of It Seems to Matter_ , by Kablob.
> 
> So, for levels of power when it comes to the Force. Whatever the RPGs might say, it’s clear from the movies that strength of connection to the Force and training in how to use it are two entirely separate things. However, while there is no way the Jedi Order finds all the strong force-sensitives in the Republic so there can be many more than seems to be the case on the surface, there aren’t so many that you can have enough in a single planetary population to populate a large Order (not unless that planet’s name is Coruscant, anyway). Hence the crystals Jenni is used to — among other things they amplify the Force, allowing someone that would otherwise be way too weak to perform at Jedi level. So Jenni thinks that Ahsoka, who I’m considering to be above average but not spectacularly so (and about Jenni’s level), to be incredibly powerful. What Jenni is going to think when she meets _Anakin_....
> 
> I don't know when another chapter will be up, I basically spent a large chunk of the day working on this after finishing my weekend allotment of my primary stories and don't know when I'll be able to find the time again.


	3. Beautiful Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, almost 2 1/2 months, I did say this one would be intermittent. But I've been good, focusing on my main stories all this time, and just couldn't resist this weekend. But fair warning, it'll probably be at least this long before I get back to it.

Quill Bolera was bored, frustrated, and angry ... especially angry. He had been stalking a senator that had become a minor thorn in his Master’s side and had just been ready to strike, everything lined up to make it seem like a Separatist terrorist cell — a perfect excuse for the local contingent of the Grand Army of the Republic to impose more stringent controls. (And didn’t that title make him want to snicker?) And then he’d gotten the order from his Master — _directly_ from his Master, not through the usual cut outs and blind drops — to drop everything and search for a former Padawan that had run away from the Jedi Order. However important the task had to be for the Sith Lord to risk contacting him that way, he was feeling distinctly ill-used.

It hadn’t actually been all that hard to work out where she had run to once he arrived at Milagro and sliced into the official records of the investigation, what there were of them. (The police had assumed that the bounty hunters had been after the free trader and bitten off more than they could chew ... but only barely. That allowed the police to call it good and not take a closer look — perhaps at his master’s ‘suggestion’.) The identity of the free trader whose body had been found alongside those of the dead mercenaries had led him to the bay he had been docked in — empty, but Bolera managed to find a witness that had seen Tano enter the bay just before _Fate’s Gift_ took off. Traffic control hadn’t bothered to keep the record of the exact track of the freighter’s jump into hyperspace, but Wynt Chinelo had been a regular at the port and the traffic controllers had been able to tell Bolera the general vector. Between that and the nature of the cargoes that Chinelo both sold and bought, Bolera had known just which backwater Outer Rim world he’d been scratching out a living off of.

Unfortunately traffic control hadn’t had anything like adequate nav-charts for the hyperspace route to Trey and so Bolera had spent three weeks — _three weeks_ — prowling his ship’s limited living quarters bored out of his mind while he was in hyperspace.

But his boredom was _finally_ at an end as the swirling white of hyperspace turned into streaks before collapsing into stars, and he found himself throwing up his hands to block a light that was all in his mind, the concentrated power of the light side of the Force washing over him — the whole planet was a vergence! He almost pushed forward the levers that would throw his ship back into hyperspace without bothering to compute a course, but with an act of will that left him shaking managed to stop his hand halfway — and a good thing, because he was flying directly toward Trey and doing that would have turned his ship into a smoking crater and him with it.

Having gotten himself under control, he scanned for landing beacons, any form of traffic control — nothing. He was able to locate the handful of settlements on the map he’d downloaded back at Milagro, but it hadn’t been updated in a century (in violation of the Republic’s requirement that an updated planetary map and census be sent to Coruscant every twenty-five years, but throughout most of the Outer Rim that the Republic actually claimed no one really cared) and his scanners were picking up local com traffic for at least twice that many. Population growth hadn’t been explosive, but it had been substantial. And that meant he had more settlements to search through for the elusive Tano than he’d hoped, if not as many as he’d feared.

For a moment he wished that he was more of a sensor, but he put the thought aside as pointless — even if he was good enough to sense Tano from orbit, the sheer power of the vergence would have undoubtedly washed out her presence.

He tried to send a report back to his Master, but as he’d feared it turned out to be impossible: a hyperwave transceiver connected to the HoloNet was too expensive for this backwater, and ... no, as was often the case in such systems the local subspace transceiver was locked to outsiders — he could send the message, but not without asking permission and leaving a record. For a brief moment he considered turning right around and heading back to Milagro, but ... three weeks. And once he’d made his report, his Master would undoubtedly order him to turn around and return to hunt for Tano — another three weeks (minus the maybe-a-day he would be able to shave off thanks to the data from his two trips along the route). And then _another_ three weeks returning after he’d completed his mission. No, that was too long to keep his Master’s best Hunter cooling his heels, and she’d probably be gone by the time he got back anyway. He would simply have to find and kill the former Padawan and make his report when he returned to civilization.

Decision made, he started by circling the planet, comparing settlement size on the map with what he could glean from the com traffic — with no way to pick one settlement over another, he would simply start with the largest and work his way down. He grimaced at the thought. Yes, he knew the Sith were supposed to be masters of their fate rather than slaves to the whim of a higher Power, but sometimes he thought a little guidance outside of battle and Force visions of possible futures would not be amiss — though since he was headed into a light side vergence, it was possible that guidance would have been denied him, anyway.

The comp pinged its success at locating the largest settlement, and he sighed as he piloted a course toward it — unless he got lucky, this was going to be almost as tedious as his weeks in hyperspace.

_At least it’s not Coruscant_.

/oOo\

Ahsoka sat cross legged on the metal floor of _Fate’s Gift_ ’s hold, sighing as she examined once again the parts spread out in front of her. Much to her surprise, she _almost_ had everything she needed to build a new lightsaber, three of them even. They would be too large, clunky, and ugly, but they would _work_ — if she could find new kyber crystals to replace the ones in the lightsabers she’d left behind when she walked out on the Order, which wasn’t likely. It wasn’t like she could hop across to Ilum and seek out new ones, and there weren’t a lot of loose ones kicking around the galaxy. She figured the chances of finding a kyber crystal anywhere on Trey was about the same as the temperature of deep space. Still, while she hadn’t actually expected to find one on the ship, she had hoped —

She glanced up as she felt the now-familiar caress of Jenni’s Force-powered attention. As expected, the human was standing in the hold’s inner doorway — dressed in the same shirt and pants she’d been wearing under her coat when Ahsoka first found her — but it felt early. Ahsoka focused through the Force on her time sense for a moment, then frowned. It _was_ early, normally Jenni would still be in the common room practicing Galactic Standard with Defenate. Waving Jenni over, Ahsoka asked, “Shouldn’t you still be translating?”

She did have to agree that the way Jenni and Defenate had overcome their lack of training vids for Galactic Standard was unique. Jenni would recite something she’d read with the Force enhancing her memory to get it word for word — in Anglic, of course — then Defenate would translate it into Galactic and Jenni would read it out loud with Defenate correcting her pronunciation and providing the meaning (Jenni occasionally correcting the translation). It had certainly worked, over the past several months Jenni’s Galactic, though still accented, had become excellent if somewhat formal. But Ahsoka was getting a little worried about Jenni’s growing obsession with regurgitating an endless stream of history, philosophy, plays, novels —

“I thought I’d take a break, see what you were doing.” Jenni waved at the parts scattered across the floor. “What’s all this?”

In spite of her apparent focus away from Ahsoka the caress of her awareness never wavered, and the former Jedi fought to hide another growing ember of concern at the desperation that underlay that awareness. Once Jenni had explained the intimate nature of the Bonds, often physically but always mentally, it hadn’t been hard to understand (if only dimly) why Jenni reached out to Ahsoka through the Force whenever they shared a room — having one’s constant emotional ... awareness? mindscape? ... reduced from five to one had to be devastatingly lonely. But this was the first time Jenni had actually sought her out for a ‘fix’, however limited Jenni’s perception of Ahsoka’s presence in the Force must be compared to the shared emotional life of four other people.

_I wonder if she knows I know the first thing she does every morning is cry?_

But nothing in Ahsoka’s sixteen years had prepared her for dealing with the situation, so she set her growing fears aside once again. “I’m trying to build a lightsaber.”

“A lightsaber?” Jenni’s eyes lit up at the word — much of what Ahsoka had told her about the Jedi Order had her muttering about navel gazers, but she had been impressed by the description of the Order’s signature weapon.

“Yeah, but I’m afraid I’m missing the kyber crystal, and it’s the most important component.”

“Kyber crystal?” Jenni frowned thoughtfully. “What does it do?”

“It’s imbued with the Force, with it the lightsaber becomes a manifestation of a Jedi’s — or a Force user’s, I guess, for me now at least — connection to the Force.”

“ ‘Imbued with the Force’?” Jenni suddenly grinned. “Like a focus? I might have an answer ...” Her voice trailed away as she suddenly looked sick. “Uh ... why do you want a lightsaber?”

“Because we’re almost out of rations, maybe a week’s worth left. When we head for what passes for civilization on this planet, I’d like to have at least one weapon I’m practiced with.”

Jenni struggled with herself for a moment, then, reluctance clear in every line, said, “I might have an alternative.”

/\

Jenni stared into the room where Ahsoka had found her, eyes haunted.

The trip this time had been quicker than the first time Ahsoka had made it — there were two of them, and Jenni had known the layout — but the Human had become more withdrawn with every step until they’d reached the room. There she’d simply stopped and stared as minute after minute ticked by.

Finally, Ahsoka stepped up behind Jenni and shifted a hand out from under the blanket she was again using as a coat to place on the Human’s shoulder. “Jenni?”

“It’s here they died, you know — all of them. Henrik, Kaulana, Yua, Sacagawea ... and every other Flame burning bright on the planet.”

“I know.”

Jenni turned to look Ahsoka in the eyes. “I should have died here — I _wanted_ to die here. I didn’t want to live past that day, not after what we did.”

Ahsoka desperately scrambled for words, blurted out, “Maybe the Force has a purpose for you still?”

Jenni laughed, and Ahsoka felt her skin crawl at the bitter, hysterical edge to the sound. “Ninety thousand years in stasis? More likely it just didn’t want to throw away a useful tool.” She turned away and strode back up the corridor. “Come on, what we need is this way.”

/\

Ahsoka gaped, staring wide-eyed into the room whose secret entrance she and Jenni had managed to blow open with her blaster.

Once again their hand lights weren’t necessary, because the entire room was lit up by the boxes and boxes of softly glowing gems stashed in the shelves cut into the rock. And not just glowing, Ahsoka felt like she was bathing in the Force, sweeping over and around her through her covering blanket, washing away her worries. Forcing her eyes away from the sight to her companion, she whispered, “What _are_ they?”

Jenni too could apparently feel their influence, as tension, so much a part of the Human that Ahsoka hadn’t even realized it wasn’t a natural part of her, seemed to just flow away. “We don’t ... didn’t have a distinguishing name for them, we just called them crystals. Any Dancer would know what we were talking about, and they were too ... private ... to speak of to anyone that wasn’t a Dancer.”

“But what _are_ they?”

“As best we could tell, they are ... not the Tao made manifest but _in tune_ with the Tao, so that we can focus on them, through them, to accomplish more than we ever could alone. And just maybe, they are replacements for the ‘kyber crystals’ you spoke of.”

“I think you may be right.” Ahsoka turned back to the room and opened herself to the Force. It was hard not to allow it to ‘wash’ her away, to focus even as she stayed relaxed and open to the Force all about her. And unlike her pilgrimage to Ilum where she had spent long hours seeking out a single kyber crystal calling to her, here _all_ the crystals — thousands of them — called for her attention. But amidst the ‘cacophony’ a single crystal ‘shone’ brighter than the rest, and she confidently stepped forward to a single corroded box. It came apart in her hands when she tried to pick it up off its shelf, glowing crystals cascading down across the floor, but she stooped and scooped one crystal out of the air, on the bounce. “ _This_ one.”

Now it was Jenni’s turn to stare wide-eyed, though at Ahsoka rather than the room. “What did you just do?”

“I opened myself to the crystals, picked out the one that was most ... ‘in tune’ with me. Didn’t your people do that?”

“No. we knew that individual crystals worked better for some Dancers than others, but we found out which best suited us by trial and error. To pick out a single one from all those? Still, you just did it....” Face firming in determination, she turned back to the room, closed her eyes ... and staggered back several steps. “Wow, that’s a _rush_.” She stepped forward again, closed her eyes. Again, minute after minute ticked by as sweat beaded on her forehead. Then she stretched out a hand and made her way into the room, eyes still closed, sliding her feet on the floor to avoid slipping on the crystals scattered there, until she touched another box. This time her touch alone was enough for it to fall apart, and she snatched a handful of crystals out of those streaming to the floor and picked one out before dropping the rest.

Then she bent over, hands on her knees as she gasped for breath. “That is _tough_.” Finally straightening, she slid her way to the doorway then turned around to stare back into the room. “I think we should leave the rest here. This room is shielded, but to any whose flames burn bright any crystals we take with us that aren’t not personally attuned will shine like spotlights, at least any not kept in specially prepared containers that we don’t have. And we can have only one crystal personally attuned to us at a time.”

Ahsoka grimaced. “That’s too bad, my usual fighting style uses two shota — small lightsabers.” Shrugging, she added, “Perhaps it’s just as well, I was probably too dependent on it. Let’s get back to the ship and find out if we have any lightsabers at all.”

/\

Ahsoka took a deep breath, squeezed the safety built into her new hopefully-a-lightsaber’s hilt, pressed the ‘on’ button, and promptly dropped it as the hilt heated up.

“Okay, that was more than just ‘not working’.” Jenni waited until the hilt finished clattering cross the ship hold’s floor, then knelt and held her hand an inch or so above it. “Hot. What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Ahsoka grabbed a pair of pliers and a screwdriver and set about opening up the casing. In the end she had to pry it open, to find the components inside fused into a solid mass. “Definitely more than ‘not working’.”

Jenni peered over her shoulder, and Ahsoka suddenly realized that for once Jenni wasn’t even partially focused on her through the Force as her curiosity got the better of her. “Yeah, definitely more. What happened?”

“I don’t know, I just hope it didn’t damage the crystal.” Ahsoka started chipping away at the fused components. The worry twisting at her gut was very un-Jedi-like, but when Jenni had demonstrated how to attune herself with her chosen crystal and then walked her through the process herself, the Togruta had been stunned at the result. The kyber crystal she had been guided to on Ilum had seemed to resonate with her when she reached out to it with the Force, but her new crystal had seemed to _merge_ with her. Even now as she struggled to free it, she could sense it like a piece of herself buried in the melted metal and rubber.

“Your crystal should be fine, they can be dipped in lava and be still cool when they’re plucked out.” Jenni shifted around where she could watch Ahsoka work the crystal free. “So how do lightsabers work?”

“Power from a power cell is focused through a series of lenses and energizers that convert it to plasma. The plasma is projected through the krayt crystal to give it the properties that allows the plasma to be held by the containment field, then sent through another series of field energizers and modulation circuitry to create the coherent beam of energy that forms the blade. The blade is arced back to a negatively charged fissure ringing the emitter by the containment field, which channels the power back to the power cell.”

The crystal finally popped out of its molten prison, and Ahsoka snatched it out of the air then looked up and giggled at the confused look on Jenni’s face. “Here, let me show you.” Reaching over to pull a box away from the wall, she dumped out its contents and sorted out the various components for another lightsaber, explaining each one’s purpose as she went.

When she finished, Jenni frowned thoughtfully. “I see why it didn’t work. _These_ crystals can transform energy just fine, but the only source of power they will accept flows from the Tao. Which means that when you flipped the ‘on’ switch the plasma hit your crystal and had nowhere to go.”

“So instant meltdown.”

“So instant meltdown.”

Ahsoka sighed in disappointment and started placing the components back in the box. “Then I guess that’s that, we’ll just have to go with the blaster and hope we don’t run into anything too dangerous.”

“Don’t give up yet.” Ahsoka’s head snapped up, and Jenni smiled at her renewed hope. “Like I said, our crystals can transform the flow of the Tao into energy, we just need to figure out the ... frequency? ... of the plasma we need and get rid of the extraneous components, and try again.”

“But ... but how do we feed the Force through the crystal? Where does it _come_ from?”

“It comes from us.” Jenni fished her crystal out of her pocket and held it out in the palm of her hand, and after a moment its faint glow began to brighten until Ahsoka had to hold up her hand to shield her eyes. Jenni clenched her hand into a fist, the light leaking through her fingers for an instant before going out. “Ahsoka, so far as the Tao is concerned these crystals are a part of us. As it flows through us it flows through them, and we can direct that flow as the crystal transforms it at our direction.” With a grin, she added, “It’s too bad we can only attune to a single crystal at a time, or we’d never need batteries again!”

Ahsoka finished putting away the components and dug her own crystal out of her pocket. “So how do we do this?”

Jenni’s grin broadened. “Practice.”

/\

_Ten days later:_

Again crouched on the floor of the hold, Ahsoka finished assembling their second attempt at a working lightsaber as unwanted tension again coiled in her gut. It had taken them _way_ too long to figure out exactly what ‘frequency’ they needed for the crystals to produce plasma (not a bad descriptive Jenni had come up with, Ahsoka thought, considering the process they’d gone through getting the right output).

Then they’d had to work out what to do with the energy being fed back — they couldn’t get rid of the fissure ringing the emitter, that feedback was needed to maintain the blade’s stability, but they no longer had a battery powering the blade for the fissure to feed that energy back into. They’d eventually settled on a series of empty batteries for the power to feed into and a heat vent and light if a fight went on too long, but it was a slapdash, temporary fix at best.

Now if only that slapdash, temporary fix would _work_. It would have to, they had enough rations left for one more meal.

“Ready?”

Ahsoka smiled at an equally tense Jenni and not even trying to hide it. (Though one thing Ahsoka was pleased with was the way the last week’s effort had seemed to ease that bitterness in the other woman.) “Ready!” She rose to her feet walked out into the center of the hold. Holding the lightsaber out at arm’s length, she clenched her hand to squeeze the safety, put her thumb over the ‘on’ button, focused on her crystal inside the hilt ... and froze as the Force _screamed_ at her of lethal danger.

“Ahsoka, what is wrong!?”

The Togruta carefully lowered the lightsaber and called back, “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s _really_ dangerous.”

After a moment’s quiet, Jenni called back, “Leave the lightsaber there, we’ll activate it from a distance.”

“Good idea.” She carefully placed the lightsaber on the floor and walked back toward Jenni. The Human was looking around, and Ahsoka felt her reach out through the Force to pull several large crates over in front of them. “Another good idea.”

Joining Jenni behind the crates, Ahsoka reached out through the Force and lifted the lightsaber to shoulder height, squeezed the safety, focused on the crystal, simultaneously fed the Force into the crystal and pressed the button — and both she and Jenni ducked down as the lightsaber exploded, bits and pieces pinging off the wall above their heads and the crates in front of them. They both peeked over the top of the crates at the circular soot mark on the floor with a softly glowing crystal bouncing to a stop in the middle.

“Did I mention that our crystals amplify the current of the Tao that we feed into them?”

“No. No, you didn’t.”

/\

Several hours later, Ahsoka finished assembling the last lightsaber they had components for. She had spent those hours practicing moderating how much of the Force she fed into her crystal, and figuring out just how much she needed for the required output.

Now she again strode out into the middle of the hold, lifted the lightsaber out to arm’s length at shoulder-height, clenched her hand to squeeze the safety, put her thumb over the ‘on’ button, focused on her crystal inside the hilt ... and when no warning came from the Force pressed the button while simultaneously (and _extremely_ cautiously) ‘pushed’ the Force into the crystal — and a pure white blade spring from the hilt, humming.

“Yes, we did it!” At her shout her concentration on the crystal stuttered and the blade vanished, but it didn’t matter — she had a working lightsaber, the rest was just practice.

“Yes, we do.” Jenni walked out to join her, admiring the blade that Ahsoka had once again activated. “That’s quite some weapon, too bad we don’t have the components for another one.”

Relaxing her grip on the safety and dropping her focus on her crystal (did she even need a safety, if the lightsaber could only activate if she focused on the crystal?), Ahsoka shook her head. “No, it’s just as well. Lightsabers are tricky to use, and incredibly dangerous to anyone that hasn’t practiced with one. If we can get the components to control the intensity of the blade so we could reduce it to practice saber-level then I could train you, but as it is you’re better sticking to the blaster and leave the lightsaber to me.”

“That makes sense.” Jenni gazed longingly at the humming blade for another long moment, then shrugged. “So, on to the nearest settlement to find out if we can earn enough credits to refuel?”

“Maybe.” Deactivating the lightsaber, Ahsoka clipped it to her belt and strode toward the hold’s doorway.

In the common room, Ahsoka brought up the world map dotted with the settlements. Setting the map to slowly spin, she concentrated on the points of light, opened herself to the Force ... she reached out to touch a light dot at a junction of the two major rivers that Jenni had named ‘North America’. “ _That_ one.”

She looked up to find Jenni staring at her in confusion. The Human asked, “Did you just use the Tao to pick our destination?”

“Yes, I did. Do you mean your people didn’t?”

“No, we didn’t.” Jenni shifted her gaze back to the still-spinning map, eyes alight with wonder.

“How about Force visions?”

“We’d get them in dreams occasionally, it’s not hard to tell them from ordinary dreams or nightmares, but we don’t seek them out — just go with the flow of the Tao. Do you seek them out?”

“Sometimes, but you can’t really depend on them — ‘Always is in motion is the future’, as Master Yoda has said.”

“Coool.” Jenni gazed in wonder at the map for another long moment, then turned to Ahsoka. “So let’s go and see what kind of future the Tao is sweeping us toward.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know, mostly a process chapter this time. I wanted to get into some of the differences between the Jedi Order and the Youxia bonds. Sure, IMHO the bonds are superior to the Order, but not in everything — including the passivity they’ve picked up from the Taoism of their founder, insofar as looking to the future is concerned. It’s made them miss some possibilities, the same way that Order’s insistence on no emotion or connections has led it to miss some.
> 
> I took Timothy Zahn’s idea of the cave on Dagobah being a vergence that hid Yoda from the Emperor and extended it to the entire planet, like Tython but not as dangerous to non-Force sensitives (nor lost in the Deep Core, just a backwater planet no one important has ever heard of).
> 
> Note on time measurement: For this story I’m going with a Standard Year equaling 8766 hours (maybe make a Galactic Standard hour 3.6% shorter than ours for an even 9000?). But rather than the five days per standard week Wookieepedia gives I think ten days makes more sense: seven days for a usual work week and a three day weekend. Of course, non-Republic worlds will do whatever they please, and on the less “civilized” Republican worlds that seven-day work week is mostly a pipe dream.
> 
> The chapter title comes from the song by U2 — it’s a Beautiful Day, but things don’t quite _feel_ right....


	4. Back to Sorta-Civilization

Ghent Tardun sighed as he stepped out of his office/jail, rubbing his face.

At the sound Cal glanced up from where he was leaning his chair against the wall. “That much fun, huh?”

“Yeah, Cort’s rants are getting longer. And even more obscene, if you can believe it.”

“Can you blame him?”

Ghent sighed again as he dropped onto the chair next to his lifelong friend, hand automatically checking to make sure the blaster on his hip was secure. “No, I don’t — it’s been weeks since _Riptide_ pinged him on arrival and promptly disappeared, he’s getting scared ... more scared. But that doesn’t make it any more fun being on the wrong side of the com while he vents. And then there’s his demands that we drop everything and search the planet.”

“Yeah, like _that’s_ gonna happen. Maybe we could manage to pull people away from what little time they can get in on their digs if there was any real chance of success, but it’s a big planet. If we had any ships we could scan for wreckage from orbit, but ...” Cal shrugged.

“True.” Ghent tilted his chair back to lean against the jail’s wall and swept his gaze along the synthecrete main street (only street, really, except for some short dirt roads) to the single landing pad at the end. It wasn’t much, but as the marshal of Newtown and the largely empty lands for hundreds of kilometers in all directions and even more since his marriage, it was in some sense his. “So, anything new from the dig at First Light? Or are they still digging out all the frozen mud?”

“Still digging out the mud. They’re asking for more help from Alysha Ranch, but they’re going to have to wait until after the roundup. However much everyone would like to dive in, keeping us all fed comes first.”

Ghent chuckled. He knew a few that would starve before they’d walk away from a dig, even if only temporarily, so it was a good thing cooler heads (or at least less fanatical) were in charge. As fascinating as the possibilities the First Light dig represented, he would miss the neo-nerf steaks next year if the roundup was interrupted. The neo-nerfs only had two horns and their hides lacked the nerf’s thick coat over their shoulders and heads, but their spit wasn’t acidic, their stench wasn’t near as bad, the meat was just as delicious, and the herds were _finally_ getting large enough that it was dropping out of the luxury item category. If it wasn’t for the Treyans’ consensus policy of staying largely unnoticed until their digs had given up incontrovertible proof, that meat _would_ be a luxury item, Trey’s biggest export.

He frowned when his daydream of a thick, juicy, neo-nerf steak was interrupted by the sight of a speeder bike coming out of one of those dirt roads. He didn’t recognize either of the two girls, even if he did the species — a Togrutan piloting and Human behind her. And he _should_ recognize them, he knew everyone around close enough to use a speeder bike to come to town. For that matter, he knew everyone close enough to use a hopper to come to town — Newtown had only been settled a couple generations, and with only a few unique finds so far there hadn’t been a lot of immigration from the rest of the planet. And the Togrutan especially, not many non-Humans had joined the wild bantha chase that was Trey’s founding and fewer had migrated to Trey since. Though he’d never seen anything like the Human’s white hair shot through with blue in imitation of her Togrutan friend’s montrals and lekku, either

The speeder stopped in the middle of the street as the two women looked both ways at the businesses that made up most of the buildings (on the first floors, at least, with the owners living on the floors above them). Then the Togrutan pointed at the general store before gunning the speeder bike into motion again. The pair dismounted from the bike and walked inside.

Ghent, what’s wrong?”

“Strangers on a speeder bike.”

“So?”

“Where’d they come from, on a bike?”

Cal shrugged. “Maybe they’re staying on one of the farms, borrowed the bike.”

“But then I’d know the bike —” Ghent stiffened as he realized he _did_ know the bike, the dent and long scratch in the paint ... he could remember the time Ian had tried to ride his bike up the side of a cliff-in-all-but-name on a drunken dare and ended up leaving for his run to Milagro a few days late and smelling thanks to his bacta bath. He glanced at the buildings around the store, on both sides of the street, ran down his mental list of the people he knew were in town. “Put out the call for a posse, a circle around Navin’s store.”

/\

“— but there simply isn’t any work around here. The harvest is in so the farms won’t have enough work for the hands they have until spring, and the bar has enough maids. The digs are always happy for more hands, but I assume you’re looking for more than room and board.”

“Yes, we are. But if that’s all we can get for a few months, then that’s all we can get. Are there better prospects anywhere else?” Ahsoka kept half an eye on the storekeeper as he frowned thoughtfully, and the rest of her attention on Jenni as she wandered the store, examining its not-so-varied products. Ahsoka wondered just how the store’s offerings looked to her time-lost friend — the former Jedi figured that food packets probably looked the same after ninety thousand years, and cooking aids would probably be a case of form following function. But the power packs and engine parts, both mechanical and electronic ...

“Lorne, the Marshal’s on the com!”

The female voice came from a back room, and the storekeeper straightened and turned away. “Excuse me for a moment.” He disappeared into the back room, and Ahsoka focused all her attention on her friend with a smile.

The smile quickly faded, though, as a sense of unease grew ... a warning from the Force. But it wasn’t as abrupt as the warnings she knew so well from when she came under attack during the war, nor as intense as the constant “buzz” of being in a hostile war zone.

And Jenni didn’t seem to sense anything at all.

Then Lorne came out of the back room. “My apologies for making you wait. I’m afraid I can’t help you, any work at this season that actually pays would be south of the equator but I don’t know what communities.”

Ahsoka forced a smile. “Thank you for your time. Can you give me the contact info for the digs?”

“Certainly.” He quickly scribbled some numbers and letters on a small sheet of paper. “Here’s the web address.”

“Thank you.” Ahsoka took the offered sheet. “Jenni, come on, we’re going!”

Jenni turned away from an assortment of battery packs and hurried over to rejoin Ahoska. The two stepped through the doorway and walked toward the speeder bike, Ahsoka’s tensing and looking around as the warning through the Force grew stronger and stronger....

A heavy metal blast door slammed _up_ across the door and windows behind them with a massive clang that had Ahsoka jerking around, scrabbling at the clunky, makeshift lightsaber at her belt as the whine of a blaster bolt sounded, a ricochet —

She whipped back around, focusing on her crystal set inside her lightsaber’s hilt as she squeezed the safety, its pure white blade sprang to life....

The speeder bike had lifted from hip-high to chest-high with a tendril of smoke made of vaporized metal rising from it, hovering in front of Jenni’s widespread hands as if they were plastered against an invisible window. And someone was shouting.

“— nine rings take you, _hold your fire!_ Someone take that damned idiot’s long-gun away from him.”

A male Human, average height, dark hair balding, slightly overweight ... the man that had been shouting, Ahsoka thought, stepped away from where he’d been standing behind a building’s corner. He had a blaster in hand and a badge on the chest of his vest — too far away to see the details, but she would have bet the credits she didn’t have that it had the two back-to-back triangles that were used to represent the law on many of the Outer Rim’s frontier planets. He paused to stare at Ahsoka and Jenni for a moment, before sliding his blaster back in its holster and walking toward them with his hands spread wide. A younger Human male — maybe even a teenager — stepped out of the door of the same building. (A building whose windows were also covered by metal shutters with firing slits, Ahsoka noticed — along with most every other window and door along the street.) He holstered his own blaster before joining the older man, ignoring the irritated glance the marshal sent him.

Through the Force she could sense hostile attention, but the feeling of imminent danger had faded. And none of the hostility was coming from the two walking toward her and Jenni.

“Morning, I’m Ghent Tardun and this is my sometime deputy, Brodie Vandorack,” the marshal said when the pair were close enough for normal conversation. “So, what are two Jedi doing on Trey? And where’s Ian?”

For a brief moment Ahsoka was tempted, but ... “I’m afraid neither of us are Jedi. Who is — ?”

“You’re Ahsoka Tano!”

Ahsoka froze for a moment at the deputy’s exclamation, but relaxed when no new warning flared in the Force. “Yes, I am. How did you _know?_ ”

“We may be such a backwater we don’t have a hyperwave transceiver —” the Marshal began.

“Yeah, how the Order treated you really suck!”

Ghent shot a repressive glance at his deputy. “— but we do get the news bursts through the subspace transceiver — your trial got a lot of coverage, I don’t know how I didn’t make the connection myself. And Ian Keel is the owner of the speeder bike your ‘non-Jedi’ friend is using as a shield.”

“Oh, I never did learn his name.” Ahsoka hesitated, but didn’t know how to sugarcoat it — with two years of war she’d had more than a few friends die, but both as a Jedi and a commander of clone troopers she’d never had to write so much as a condolence letter. “He died saving my life.”

Ghent sighed, suddenly looking older. “I was afraid of that. After _Riptide_ disappeared after pinging her arrival months ago and then you showing up on his speeder ...” He lifted the comp on his wrist and pressed a button. “All clear, everyone, thanks for coming out.” As people started rising on roofs and other shuttered windows rose, he waved toward his office. “You want to join me? I got someone that’s gonna need to know just how his friend died.”

/\

“— and then Ian opened fire from behind his turned over table. He took down a few of the bounty hunters, and half the rest turned their fire on him. He probably thought the table would shield him, but didn’t take into account how heavy some of the bounty hunters’ blasters were — they blew through the table and took him down. But the distraction he provided gave me the chance to get over the bar and charge the bounty hunters. I didn’t have my shotos, but I did have a knife, and they weren’t wearing full body armor. Once I was in the middle of them, they didn’t stand a chance. I killed a few, more died from their own partners’ fire trying to shoot me and missing, and the survivors ran. Ian was still alive when I got to him, but even if there’d been a bacta tank right there I don’t think it would have helped. He was hurt too badly.” Ahsoka paused for a moment, eyes haunted as she remembered others she’d known with similar injuries, their hands in hers going limp as they died. Her voice gone soft, she finished with, “He survived long enough to give me the access codes to his ship and tell me where to find her. He never did tell me his name. I wonder if he recognized me like Deputy Vandorack?”

“Probably,” the Human male whose head-and-chest holographic image floating over the desk replied. (A rather handsome Human as they counted such things, as best she could tell from the hologram, at least compared to Skyguy. At least he had a full head of hair and no beard.) “He loved _Riptide_ , he wouldn’t give it to some random Togrutan that isn’t even fully grown yet, even if he was dying.”

“ _Riptide_?”

“You would know it as _Fate’s Gift_ , that’s what was on the paperwork he was using.”

“So you believe her?”

Ahsoka and Jenni stiffened at Marshal Tardun’s question, but Cort nodded as he surreptitiously wiped at wet cheeks. “Yes, now that Ahsoka’s given me the details I’ve found the law enforcement records of his death in my downloads from Milagro. What’s there checks out. Dumb bastard always did have a soft spot for a pretty face. Once while we were on the run here —” He broke off, waving a hand dismissively.

Ahsoka flinched, then stiffened for a moment when Jenni took one of her hands, down toward their laps where neither man could see it. _What do I_ do _?_ She struggled with the thought for a moment, then settled for gently squeezing Jenni’s hand before letting go.

“Besides,” Cort continued, “You’re being hunted. That adds some veracity to your claim.”

Ghent straightened in his chair. “You really think so? Hold that thought.” He lifted his wrist-comp to his mouth again. “Clear sailing, Cort’s given the green light.” He lowered his hand as acknowledges sounded and grinned at the two girls gaping at him. “You didn’t think we’d just take your word for who you are? Well ... Tano, at least. I’m afraid the name ‘Jenni Allston’ doesn’t mean anything to us.” Ahsoka froze, focused on Jenni, and relaxed when she sensed her friend’s mental giggles through the Force ... and suddenly realized that Jenni’s attention hadn’t been focused on her once since they’d hit town! At least, not through the Force like on the ship. _Maybe she’s getting better?_

“— third town in a month. The story he’s used every time has him just arriving, too. You’d think he didn’t think we’re talking to each other.”

Ahsoka refocused on the conversation in time to see a slight smirk cross the face of Cort’s holographic image. “He doesn’t. The first thing he did once he landed is slice the planetary network and go looking for the government databases ... I think. If that’s what he was looking for, he didn’t go anywhere near the trade databases. Guess he didn’t think that reports of what you found in the digs matter.”

To the former Jedi he might as well have been speaking an alien language, but Jenni was grinning. “Trade databases? Digs? You hid access to your government databases in _archaeology_ websites? That’s brilliant!”

“Ahhh ... well ...” Ghent mumbled.

Cort laughed, though it sounded slightly forced. “Their government databases aren’t hidden in the archaeology websites, they _are_ the archaeology websites.”

Now it was Jenni’s turn to stare at him as if he was speaking an alien language (which for Jenni at least he was, now that Ahsoka thought about it). “What?”

“Well, yes ...” Ghent shrugged, embarrassed. “Trey was actually colonized by a Core World archaeologist named Vinjera Kurn several centuries ago. Kurn found some ancient records that said that Coruscant isn’t the Human homeworld, but as far as the survivors of some great calamity got before their ships wore out. The records didn’t say what the nature of the calamity was or how many refugees landed on Coruscant, or even in what direction they had come, but it did include a description of the star system. She spent decades searching every star map she could find, and eventually found this world. All her fellow scholars thought she was crazy to take those records so seriously, that it had to be a hoax even if they couldn’t figure out how it was done, but she was a true believer and so she and her followers — and their families — moved here looking for proof, gave the planet the name in the records.” He shrugged again. “They found evidence of an ancient civilization quickly enough, probably humanoid and the right size from the layouts of the few below-ground installations we’ve found, but no records or images have survived the millennia. We’ll keep looking, though — it’s a big planet, the proof has to be around here somewhere.”

Ahsoka stared at him for a long moment, then turned to meet Jenni’s eyes. She hesitantly reached out to her Human friend through the Force, and gasped at the wave of grief, exultation and loneliness that crashed over her.

But none of she was feeling showed when Jenni forced a smile. “Trey ... Terra. I guess we have trade goods we can sell, after all.” Ahsoka thought of the hours and hours of translated books stored away in _Fate’s Gift_ ’s data banks and nodded. (Or was it _Riptide_ ’s? She’d have to decide which name she wanted to keep for the ship she’d been given — the one that seemed so appropriate, or the one given by the man that had loved it.)

As Ahsoka was momentarily lost in thought, Jenni asked, “Can you bring up a map of the world?”

Ghent gazed at her curiously for a moment, then shrugged and typed some instructions into the panel he’d used to bring up Cord’s hologram. That hologram vanished, replaced by a rotating image of the globe.

Jenni rose and walked around by Ghent. She gazed at the globe for a moment, then reached out and touched a spot on the southeast section of the same continent as the town they were currently in. “Somewhere around here. It’ll take some looking, but you should be able to find a huge carving into the side of a mountain of three Human males on riding animals. The carving is under an overhang and the rock is very hard, so it should still be there.”

Ghent stared at the spot on her finger rested on, then up at Jenni. “How do you know? Is this some Jedi trick?”

“No.” Jenni shook her head, and shifted her hand to point at a spot on the continent across the ocean to the east, on the west coast just below the retreating ice. “Because I was born here when it was an island, ninety thousand years ago.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The carving actually exists — the Confederate Memorial Carving. This carving of President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson is the largest high relief sculpture in the world, its top over 400 feet above the ground, measuring 90 feet by 190 feet, and recessed 42 feet into the mountain. The rock is hard enough that if we all disappeared tomorrow, 100,000 years from now it might be the only evidence left that we were ever here. (I’m assuming that over the next thousand years leading to Jenni’s time, building materials are developed that are tough enough to survive ninety millennia if buried even if records and all other soft materials wouldn’t.)
> 
> And yes, Jenni was born somewhere in the British Isles, though that would have only been of historical interest under a centuries-old world government.


	5. Attachments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I've need working on the latest chapter of _Coming Home_ , hopefully the next chapter will be out by the end of the week. But I've been working on this one off and on when I'm mostly caught up on my writing for my current stories, so here it is.
> 
> Also, fair warning: because of this chapter **the rating has been bumped back up to E** (I don't know who dropped it to M but I wish they hadn't).

Ahsoka slowly circled about Jenni, her lightsaber held high by one hand, slanting diagonally down across her torso in the opening position of Soresu, the blade humming at the low pitch that told anyone with any experience with the weapons that it was set in training mode. Her _new_ lightsaber. Her use of Soresu — that most defensive of forms — was good practice even if she wasn’t as skilled as she could be, but unnecessary ... Jenni _never_ initiated an attack. Instead she turned in place to keep facing Ahsoka, _her_ new lightsaber in a two-handed grip at waist level, blade slanting down and humming at the same low pitch.

First the archaeologists had found the relief sculpture that Jenni had told them of. Then they’d found more evidence of ancient occupation at site after site that Jenni pointed out, some previously discovered, most not. _Then_ they found evidence of ancient terraforming of their next neighbor out from the sun, the planet Jenni had said was named Mars — a place none of them had bothered to visit, since even the most primitive hyperspace drive opened up local space with its habitable planets to easy colonization ... the possibility that humanity’s first form of space travel was something else much slower hadn’t occurred to them. And with her credentials firmly established, Jenni had turned over all her people’s literature she’d recited and translated over the past few weeks.

Now the debate raging across the planet was when to release their findings to the larger universe. (They’d avoided pirate raids by not having anything that made the trip worth it, and with the war on ...) And Ahsoka and Jenni found that what few credits they had were no good anywhere on the planet, whatever they asked for — or even expressed an interest in — was theirs. They’d kept their requests limited to an overhaul of _Life’s Gift_ (the name for their ship Ahsoka had eventually decided on in honor of the man that had saved her life at the cost of his own), topping off the fuel tanks and restocking the ship’s supplies, a few changes of clothing, a new body for Defenate ... and all the necessary components for _real_ lightsabers (with the addition of the crystals they’d brought out from the Mountain). They had spent the week since then in almost constant practice.

Ostensibly, it was to prepare Jenni for their confrontation with the stranger still wandering from town to town searching for Ahsoka, in case he was another Dark Side user. Certainly, Jenni had needed the training — she had some skill with some sort of sword that helped with lightsabers, but even with Ahsoka handicapped by her inability to use her favorite fighting style (Jar’Kai used two swords, and there were no Kyber crystals on Trey for a third lightsaber) Jenni had still been clumsy and easily handled by her trainer. At first. But now ...

In an eye-blink Ahsoka shifted from Soresu to her next-favorite form — Ataru — throwing herself up and forward, spinning and twisting head-over-heels over Jenni, pure white blade slashing down toward the Human’s white, blue-striped hair.

And just as Ahsoka had come to expect, Jenni’s equally pure white blade snapped up to block the downward swing as she spun in place, blade sweeping across her body to knock aside Ahsoka’s follow-up slash. Ahsoka stepped back, easily parrying Jenni’s counter-thrust, and dropped to swing at her ankles, then when Jenni hopped up over the attack shifted the path of the swing _up_ between her legs toward her crotch — only to blink when Jenni practically _stood on her head_ , one foot pointed at the ceiling, her blade easily knocking Ahsoka’s blade away from her body through the space now empty.

At that Ahsoka leaped back and relaxed the flow of the Force through her into her lightsaber. As her blade vanished she held up her hands to signal the end of the bout. “Oh, come on! What was _that?_ How do you _do_ that?”

“Do what?” Jenni inquired as she shut down her own lightsaber.

“Always be somewhere else. I mean, I know Jedi Masters — which Force knows I’m not — have levels of skill and emersion in the Force that make them untouchable by anyone but another Master or overwhelming numbers. I’ve seen Master Yoda bounce around a training room like a _kiffa_ ball on enhancers. But you _don’t_ have that kind of skill, you can’t come close to touching me. So how can you pull off stunts like that last one?”

“Ah, another difference. I should have realized when you told me of your six Forms, we didn’t have anything them.” Jenni walked over and picked up a water bottle by the wall, sucked down half of it, and dumped the rest over her head before continuing.

“The Youxia didn’t go in for martial arts, not most of us. We didn’t have lightsabers, or blasters, and did have a more peaceful union ... a utopia, even, while it lasted.” She faltered for a moment, face going cold, and Ahsoka’s heart clenched. She wished now she hadn’t asked, and was _really_ happy that for the moment her friend had dropped her usual near-constant focus on her through the Force, it gave her the privacy to push down her growing fear of Jenni’s mental state.

With clearly-forced cheer, Jenni continued, “Anyway, it’s another aspect of how deeply I immerse myself in the currents of the Tao. Every act of aggression is an act of _self_ , an imposition of your own will to shift that current. And because it is, there is a disturbance in that current that I sense before the blow arrives. The only way to avoid that disturbance is to train that act of aggression so strongly into mind and body that you act without thought.”

“Which I often don’t,” Ahsoka mused, realization dawning. “My preferred Form is based around two shota, I almost never fall back on a single, longer-bladed lightsaber. But why does that mean you have no Forms? There are any number of Masters that can sense the ... ‘disturbance in the currents of the Tao’ as well as you can.”

“But not many below their level, I think, your training must focus on other aspects that never occurred to us. So you use the Forms to at least partially make up for that lack. But it’s more than that. Yes, the only way to act aggressively against a Youxia without forewarning or overwhelming numbers is training, but that training is itself predictable _if_ your opponent is trained in the same Form. So the ‘Form’ of a Youxia that is swept into a warrior’s destiny is both unique and constantly changing, so that when he faces another Youxia warrior in a spar — or a slave of the Void in deadly combat — his Art is not already known.”

“And we’ve been sparring for most of a week, you’ve been learning my moves, even beyond your ‘immersion in the current of the Tao’. But I’d think that would really slow down your training — beyond enough of the basics to avoid killing yourself, every Youxia is self-taught.”

“Yes.”

The one word response was flat, cold, and through the Force Ahsoka sensed that her friend was once again falling into that raging despair that she lived with (or more like dwelt in) more and more with every passing day ... when she wasn’t focused like a laser on Ahsoka during their sparring. And they couldn’t spar _all_ the time. _So I’ll have to think of something else ... somehow. But for now_ ...

Ahsoka raised her lightsaber, focused on her crystal with a part of her attention as the rest centered itself on her friend, and her blade sprang to life. “So I’ll have to get sneakier. Let’s see how I do.”

/oOo\

When the alert from her secretary (and former handmaid and still her bodyguard), softly chimed, Senator Padme Amidala of Naboo breathed a sigh of relief and hastily pressed the acceptance key. “Yes, Aja?”

“ _Knight Skywalker is here, my lady, and wishes to know if you can tear yourself away from your oh-so-important work._ ”

Padme grinned at the snark. Aja didn’t approve of her superior’s secret intimacy with ‘the Hero with No Fear’, but nonetheless did her part to keep it quiet. Her less than respectful announcement was her way of letting Padme know that her husband had arrived alone.

She glanced around to make sure the office windows’ shutters were closed (as they almost always were now, officially to make it harder for assassins but really for these moments with her husband), then said, “Send him in. Then why don’t you call it a day? Knight Skywalker and I may have a great deal to ... discuss, and he can escort me home when we’re done.” Left unspoken, ‘the Hero with No Fear’ would provide all the protection she needed.

“ _Of course, my lady_.”

In the seconds before the door slid open, Padme blanked her screen of the vitally important but mind-numbing trade agreement she’d been reading, pushed the button that would withdraw the screen into her desk, and rose to her feet as her husband strode into her office, dressed in the blue and brown battle dress he preferred to the usual Jedi white. As soon as the door slid close behind him, she was around her desk and in his arms. “Annie!”

His arms went around her without a word, without concern for how he crushed her own gray and tan robes, her face pressed into the crook of his shoulder, his face rubbing against her brunette braids. Under her hands, even through his tunic his every muscle felt like it was poured steel. Sometimes she wished she was Force-sensitive, to be able to read the moods of the man she’d chosen, but at times like this there’d be no point.

She sighed into his neck. “No word, then.”

“No — no rumors in the under-levels, no hint that she caught a ship off Coruscant ... it’s as if Ahsoka’s vanished like she never existed.” He released her, pushed away and whirled around, fists by his side trembling. “And the Council refuses to devote more resources searching for her, they say that since she left the Order she’s no longer their concern. _No longer their concern._ As if they were concerned about her before!”

Padme stepped over, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You care. You know Obi-Wan cares. _Yoda_ cares. And I care. And you at least know she’s still alive, right? You said your master-padawan bond is still there.”

“Yes, I know she’s alive, but that’s all. And I can’t keep searching for her, Obi-Wan and I have been assigned a new mission. Tomorrow I’ll be taking the 501st to Auwei, we won’t be back for a month at least. And without me and Obi-Wan here to keeping searching ourselves —”

Padme broke their embrace to push back, hold Anakin at arm’s length so she could look him in the eye. “That leaves me. _I_ will not stop searching.”

Anakin gazed back at his wife for a long moment, then pulled her to him, crushing his lips against hers hard enough to bruise.

_Oh no, not again!_ Normally, Anakin was as loving and considerate a lover as a woman could hope for. But lately ...

His hands were already busy at the fastenings for her robes. Those robes had the appearance of the full, cumbersome robes that were the current popular style for a human Senator to conduct official business. (She had considered breaking with that style for something more comfortable, but as young and powerless as she was she would have seemed only petulant rather than a trend-setter.) But since their marriage over two years ago ... His seeking fingers found the artfully hidden clasps and her robes fell open. He brushed them back off her shoulders and she dropped her arms to her sides so the robes could slide down her back to pool about her feet, leaving her standing in only her white panties and low pink slipper-boots. One hand found an exposed breast as the other pushed aside his own blue battle robes to scrabble at the fastening of his tight, light brown pants.

Truthfully, in other circumstances she wouldn’t have minded his newfound aggressiveness so much. If it wasn’t for her concern that it was driven by his fears rather than because he had finally realized that normal people weren’t more ... fragile ... than trained Jedi, she could enjoy a more dominant Anakin — one that didn’t treat her like a precious, delicate flower that would crumble at a careless touch. The problem was —

He spun her to face the front of her desk. One hand between her shoulder blades pushed her down to lie across its top, her nipples tightening at the cool touch of its surface, while his other hand pulled her panties to one side. A moment later she could feel his engorged cock pushing past her nether lips to sink into her sheath, and she wasn’t _ready!_

His hands gripped her hips as he hammered into her, and she gritted her teeth as she endured the friction of his steel-hard cock against the stretched, barely dampening walls of her sheath. The only good thing about this whole botched up mess was that when her lover was like this he didn’t last long. Indeed, she could already feel him swelling, the pain growing worse from the imagined further stretching of her sheath’s walls, and then he _exploded_ into her as he always did on their first round whenever they could sneak in some private time together.

His last few pumps were much less painful thanks to the lubrication of his seed filling her, oozing out around his softening rod. Then he pulled out and stumbled backward, falling onto the aluthiac-leather couch she had against one wall, his pants fallen around his dark brown knee-high boots.

As he lay there gasping, she straightened and walked around to the back of her desk, pressing a hidden stud for tissue. She ignored him as she silently wiped her nether lips and inner thighs clean of the smeared white ooze. As she dropped the soiled tissue into a special disposal box to vanish with a flash into its constituent atoms, he finally spoke.

“I did it again. I’m sorry.”

Padme whirled and strode furiously toward him. “Yes, I’m sure you are! Like the last time, and the time before that. ‘Sorry’ isn’t good enough, Annie, not anymore!” She paused to stare down at him. Her resolve weakened for a moment at the clear guilty regret on his face, but she steeled herself ... they could not go on like this.

As she continued to stare down at him, a thought occurred to her. She smiled, and Anakin paled. “What you need, love, is a lesson. You are going to lie there and _not move_ unless I tell you.”

He paled even more, swallowed, but nodded convulsively.

“Good.”

She began by kicking off her slipper-boots, then hooking a thumb under each side of the waistband of her stained panties and _slowly_ pulling them down along her thighs until they came loose and slid down her legs to the floor. She stepped out of them and kicked them to one side, then straightened and spread her stance slightly, putting herself fully on display.

Eyes wide, Anakin swallowed ... though this time for a very different reason.

_Good_. Padme’s lips twitched at the sight ... but her lips weren’t what she wanted twitching. She reached up one hand to pinch and twist a nipple before kneading the breast it tipped, fingers of her other hand between her legs rubbing along her cleft then slipping up into her sheath. She twisted those rubbing fingers, seeking ... _there!_ She moaned at the sensations rippling through her from her hands and suppressed another smile as Anakin’s cock twitched and swelled from her show, growing to attention thanks to her show. _Almost there_ , she thought, beginning to gasp slightly, her hips twitching.... _Now!_

She pulled her fingers clear of her cleft and lifted them up to suck and lick them clean, her gaze fixed on her husbands’ still-wide eyes, then strode forward and straddled his hips with her hands on his shoulders. Giving him what she hoped was a sultry a smile (and hoping that his obvious lust had overwhelmed whatever sense he might have been receiving through the Force of her own state of mind), she undulated her hips, rubbing her nether lips along his by now steel-hard rod and coating it with her juices. Satisfied, she reached down to guide his cock to her sheath’s entrance and sank down with a satisfied sigh. She held still as she adjusted again to that vein-laced rod, more quickly this time thanks to her earlier reaming and fresh lubrication, then finally began to _slowly_ rise and fall.

By now her mind was fogging from the rising pleasure washing through her. He pace began to pick up slightly, sucking in air as she struggled to hold on to her purpose ... until Anakin’s own control _finally_ slipped and he began to frantically thrust up into her.

Instantly, she slammed down. “I said don’t move!”

He groaned with frustration but followed her order. She sat on his lap for a long minute, let her breathing settle, waited until his hands resting on the smooth aluthiac leather curled into fists before resuming her rise and fall. _This_ time she was better able to maintain control, her rhythm staying slow but steady ... though her hands gripping Anakin’s shoulder were tightening, fingernails digging into flesh.

Nor was she the only one maintaining control — when her husband wasn’t half-insane from worry and frustration he really was a considerate lover, and had quickly learned to somehow hold off his own release until she’d reached her own peak. Though from his increasingly strangled groans she suspected she was pushing his limits.

Finally, when she was beginning to tremble from the effort of maintaining her even pace and his head was tilted back against the back of the couch, neck taut and eyes screwed shut with his own fight to keep still, Padme decided she’d tortured them both enough. “All right, you can move.”

Even before she finished her permission Anakin’s hands flew up from the couch to pull her down against his chest even as he rolled them over, pinning her down, the smooth leather cool against her sweat-slicked skin. Hands braced on the back of the couch on each side of her head, he began the furiously pound into her, bouncing her back against the couch with each thrust. But even now he somehow managed to hold himself back until she felt her sheath clench tight around his steel-hard cock and her shrill keen of release filled the office. Within seconds Padme again felt the familiar swelling pulse and Anakin slammed into her once more and froze, buried deep, as fresh seed gushed into her womb.

Finally, when the last pulse into her overflowing sheath was over and his cock began to soften, he carefully rolled to the side and settled onto the couch beside her. “Lesson learned,” he gasped out between gulps for air, “I won’t do that again.”

Padme sighed as her own breathing slowed. “I hope not, I wouldn’t want to put you through a repeat performance.” _I think that was as hard on me as it was on you, love_.

When she decided she’d recovered enough, she pushed herself to her feet and staggered toward her office ‘fresher. “Let’s finish this up in my suite,” she called over her shoulder as the door disguised as just another wall panel slid aside. She stepped in without waiting for a reply. Anakin knew the routine, and by the time she’d finished wiping herself down and cleaned off with the sonic shower she’d had installed after the first time her husband had surprised her in her office he’d have hung up their clothes in the cleaning closet Aja had helped her install (the cleaning closet wasn’t what she would call _really_ effective, but it was good enough to kill the smell and remove obvious stains) and activated the cleaning droid he’d reprogrammed to forget dealing with the messes left behind by their little interludes. By the time she was done he’d be ready to take her place in the ‘fresher.

But this time she would be just a _wee_ bit slower getting clean. As the door slid closed behind her, she pushed a stud on the wall by the mirror and when a small storage space’s cover slid aside removed the fluid collector that space contained. The small device had been designed for collecting and preserving forensic evidence at crime scenes, but she had another use in mind. Hastily sitting on the toilet seat and spreading her legs, she inserted the probe up into her sheath. She grimaced at the cold of the probe and the sensation of its soft suction, but the clear crystaplast tube connecting the probe to the reservoir quickly turned white before the light signaling that the reservoir was full flashed. Sighing in relief, she removed the probe and returned the collector to its storage space and again pushed the stud to hide it from sight. The stud would only open to her fingerprint, the collected sample could wait to be smuggled out another day.

_I don’t care what those fools on the Jedi Council think, love_ , she thought fondly as she again wiped her inner thighs clean of his smeared seed and her own juices, _you_ need _more attachments_. Ahsoka and Obi-Wan were actually making things worse for her husband, not better — he needed another attachment that wasn’t going to vanish or constantly be at risk on the battlefield, someone not a part of the too-often horror of their current lives. _And I’ll see to it you have them. If tonight doesn’t do it, this sample will be a start_.


	6. Tearing Away the Curtain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, another chapter! Now that _The Unexpected Hobbit_ and _The Raven_ are done this is one of the stories I’ll be focused on (along with _Ranma, the Naive Succubus_ , once I finish rereading what I’ve already written).
> 
> And yes, this is a little short. For those that don’t read my other stories, I’ve decided to go with shorter chapters again, to try and motivate myself to write more. So far, it seems to be mostly working.

Jenni frowned as she stared at the large hologram in Navin-town’s small library. _Very_ small, only a hologram projector and keyboard in a room that could be mistaken for a large closet if it wasn’t for the window, but she was a little surprised to find a library at all — as connected through some form of wireless as the current colonists of Earth-that-was were, everyone would have their own tablet. But she supposed people would want a larger projector from time to time, she’d been using the library screen for stellar maps.

It had been almost a day since she’d taken her fatigue-driven misstep during her last spar with Ahsoka, and the town’s ( _village’s_ , really, ‘town’ was too grandiose a label) single part-time medic had ordered her to take a two-day break from all exercise to give her body a chance to recover from the strain of the past week (ten days, she was still getting used to that) of near-constant sparring. During that day she had felt the silence-fueled darkness of her mind growing, filling in the corners, shadowing her every thought. Even the shining flame of Ahsoka in the current of the Tao was helping less and less — as comforting as the former padawan’s presence was, it was _outside_ her, not shining at the center of her being as her Bond had been. And now Ahsoka was gone, answering a call from Marshal Tardun, and Jenni was desperate for any distraction she could manage.

Finding a possible if permanent solution to her growing instability had been quick, though it had revealed a very unpleasant side of galactic society — or _societies_ , better said. That done except for convincing Ahsoka to go along with it (something that was _not_ going to be easy), Jenni set that solution aside and turned to a more general perusal of the library’s database. She had hoped that satisfying her intellectual curiosity about recent history and current affairs would provide a distraction. It was proving distracting, all right, but only because now she was haunted by the overwhelming feeling that she was _missing_ something ... something _important_.

Whatever it was, it had to do with the beginning of the current war, whenever she let the Tao’s currents sweep her attention where it would she kept coming back to that opening battle, the First Battle of Geonosis. She reviewed the historical record of the beginning of the war yet again, and yet again couldn’t see anything significant — it seemed a straightforward battle: several Jedi found out about the Separatists’ building military strength, the Separatists tried to buy more time by killing the Jedi that found them (and Senator Amidala, and how _she_ ended up in that mess wasn’t clear), the Jedi swept in with an army of their own, clones force-grown for war —

Her thoughts stumbled. From what Ahsoka had told her the Order was supposed to be dedicated to _peace_ — diplomats preferably, ‘one riot, one ranger’ (and maybe a padawan) when diplomacy failed. What were the Jedi doing with _an army of their own!?_

Some quick research had Jenni leaning back in her seat, more confused than before. The thought of the Jedi Order making use of ultra-tech Mamelukes was disturbing, but she could understand it ... there was a war on, they needed an army, they had one handed to them, they made use of it. She couldn’t think but that there had been at least some opposition to using what was essentially a slave army, but the only alternative was a quick victory by the Separatists ... and considering what the Trade Federation had done to Naboo a decade earlier, that victory would have been catastrophic for hundreds if not thousands of major worlds and uncountable minor ones. So yes, she could understand how the pragmatists carried the day.

But where had that army _come_ from? Or rather, following Kaulana’s advice when investigating human behavior — whether crime or politics — to follow the money, where had the _funding_ for the army come from? (She fought to ignore the spurt of grief at the thought of that gentle cynic’s missing mental presence.) According to the public records, the creation of that army had been commissioned by Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas without the knowledge of the rest of the Order out of concern over the growing breakdown of public order, but surely a lifelong member of the Order couldn’t have secretly accumulated enough private wealth to fund the creation of an entire army! So who had backed him, and why wasn’t that person or organization a matter of public record?

A little digging and it turned out his backer _was_ a matter of public record, just that the public record in question was buried deep in minor news articles: Hego Damask of the Galactic Banking Clan. And that didn’t make sense, either — Damask was wealthy but he wasn’t _that_ wealthy, no individual was. Or rather he _hadn’t been_ that wealthy, seeing how he had died in his sleep at almost the moment the war started. So if Damask hadn’t funded it out of his own wealth he was either acting as a conduit for some shadowy conspiracy or he had convinced the Banking Clan to pony up the funds itself. Of the two options, the former seemed more likely than the latter — bankers weren’t big on unprofitable ventures, and there was little less profitable than an army that wasn’t being used for conquest; not much money to be had in building massive quantities of expensive materiel, shipping it great distances, and blowing it up. In either case any records wouldn’t be public, so following the money was a dead end.

 _But I’m on the right track, I think, the timing of Damask’s death isn’t suspicious at all. So if I can’t follow the money, what about the power? Who has gained the most power out of all this? It’s not the Trade Federation, the last thing they wanted was a fair fight. But it could be someone_ connected _to the Trade Federation, playing them off against the Republic._

 _So let’s google news articles for ‘increase political power war’ and see what we get_. (She fought to ignore the spurt of grief at that bit of nonsensical slang for web searches that was now known by only a single living being.)

Unsurprisingly, the number of hits was in the thousands, and she sighed, eliminated everything predating the Battle of Geonosis, sorted them from earliest to latest, and dove in.

Several hours later she leaned back and rubbed tired eyes, almost shaking with repressed anger — there had been many names that had come up in those articles, but one that had surfaced over and over: Sheev Palpatine, former Senator of Naboo and current Chancellor of the Republic. A Chancellor whose authority had been steadily growing as the years of war passed. _Don’t go off half-cocked_ , she warned herself even as the need to _obliterate_ something — anything — burned in her veins. _By all reports he’s done a lot of good with that power; he’s been a decent war leader, and has had some real success reducing corruption. What if it’s someone that intends to assassinate him and step into his shoes?_

She sat and stared and the holo-projection for a time, now just waiting for Ahsoka to return. The Togrutan was young, but still knew a hell of a lot more about galactic politics than she did, perhaps she’d be able to see something Jenni had missed. Though Jenni doubted a Padawan would be privy to the sort of information that would answer her questions, that data would be _deeply_ buried.

 _Wait, Ahsoka might not be privy to what I need, but Cort’s a hacker!_ (‘Slicer’, by current Galactic slang.) _I’ll bet_ he _can find it for us!_

It was a few moment’s work to bring up the library’s com app, and a few more moments for a hologram of the upper half of a Cort rubbing at his eyes to appear. He looked at her and grimaced. “Jenni, what was so important that you called me in the middle of the night?”

Jenni’s eyes widened, and she glanced at the angle of the shadow cast by the light from the window. “Ummm ... oops?”

Cort chuckled. “Forgot the time difference, did you? Well, I’m up now. What can I do for you?”

A now blushing Jenni quickly explained what she’d learned and her concerns, ending with, “I’ve taken it as far as I can, and I doubt Ahsoka can add anything, but you’re a hacker ... uh, slicer. I know your connection here isn’t the best but could you—”

She broke off at Cort’s raised hand. “And what will you do if you find out who’s behind this?”

She shrugged, trying to keep the snarling fury she could feel slowly building again off her face. “I don’t know, it’ll depend on who it is. Maybe nothing, but it’s better to know who your enemies are.”

“Yeah, I thought so too, that’s why I’m here.” Jenni’s eyes widened again, but this time he wasn’t laughing. “You’re not the first one to wonder about that, you know, I did too. I’m sure we’re far from the only ones ... only unlike those other ones, I was skilled enough to find out. But I wasn’t skilled enough not to get caught.” He sighed and rubbed at his face. “The first assassin missed us out of sheer dumb luck. Ian was paying attention after that and caught the next one. After that ... I got the heads up of the massive bounty posted with the Bounty Hunter’s Guild from someone that owed me a favor barely early enough for us to run. I created new identities for us, but we didn’t have anyone we trusted to give us new faces and not sell us out so we had to disappear into the Outer Rim. And here we’ve been ever since, until Ian got himself killed saving Ahsoka.”

Jenni was beginning to shake again. She whispered, “Who?”

“Are you sure you want to know? You won’t be able to un-know it after and I doubt you can do anything about it.”

“ _Who?_ ”

Cort hesitated, but finally shrugged. “The Chancellor.”

The building anger Jenni had been fighting for so long _howled_.


	7. Breaking Point

Ahsoka sighed as she walked alongside Marshal Tardun on their way back to the Navin-town library. She knew Jenni needed her around to help keep her sane, but she’d badly needed some alone time so the afternoon away from the time-lost Human was something of a relief. Speaking of which ... “Thanks for letting my borrow one of your blasters and your firing range.”

Ghent shrugged. “Whatever you want, you get. Within reason, anyway. Must say me and the boys were a bit surprised by your request, though ... and how good you were. Thought you Jedi stuck to your lightsabers.”

“We mostly do,” Ahsoka agreed, “but however ‘elegant’ a lightsaber might be compared to a blaster, there are times you need the extra range. Especially with the war. I imagine you didn’t find the rest surprising, though.”

“No, everyone knows about the Jedi ability to parry blaster bolts, and having the boys take potshots at you while you bounced around like a _kiffa_ ball made for good practice for everyone. Good thing those blasters were set on stun, though, we _didn’t_ know you could reflect the bolts back at the shooters.”

“Not all Jedi can, mostly the more experienced ones that get sent out expecting a fight. Which pretty much described my life since becoming a padawan, now that I think about it.”

Ghent chuckled but didn’t respond, the two falling silent for half a block.

When they turned to corner onto the block with the city offices containing the library cubicle, Ahsoka stopped. “So, Marshal, before we rejoin Jenni, what did you want to talk to me about?”

Ghent sighed, shaking his head. “I suppose I should have expected a Jedi to know.”

“Actually, it’s that you didn’t say anything before Jenni headed for the library, and that your offices are on the other side of town.”

Ghent laughed. “How often are Jedi powers used to explain common sense?”

“More than you’d think, having a reputation for being all-knowing has two edges,” Ahsoka replied with a grin. “Now talk!”

“Right.” Ghent hesitated for a moment, before shrugging. “Is something wrong with Jenni?”

Ahsoka’s eyes widened, that had _not_ been what she had been expecting. “Why do you think something might be wrong with Jenni?”

“A few of my people whose instincts I trust tell me that they feel ... uneasy, around Jenni. There’s nothing they can point to, but they feel like something’s wrong.”

“Do they?” Ahsoka turned to lean against the wall of the store they were standing next to, crossing her arms to seem as unthreatening as possible. “I wonder if they’re Force-sensitive? That could explain it.”

“Force-sensitive?” Ghent repeated, eyebrows rising.

“Not everyone that can sense the Force is strong enough to become a Jedi. Most aren’t, actually.” After a moment’s hesitation, Ahsoka sighed. “Yes, something is wrong with Jenni. Remember, she may be a Force-user but she _isn’t_ a Jedi, her people did things differently. She joined her bond when she was sixteen, and for the four years after before she ended up in stasis she lived with at least two people in her head, usually four — those constant presences in the Force, every emotion, able to communicate with them on the other side of the planet as easily as if they were in the same room, her mind and memories an open file, and the same for them. Now, her mind has gone silent and it’s driving her insane. Maybe she’d be all right if she was back in her own time, but …” She waved one arm, encompassing the town around them.

“But everything and everyone she knew and loved is ninety millennia gone,” Ghent said for her. “And an insane Jedi — Force-user — is a dangerous one.”

Ahsoka reluctantly nodded. “It doesn’t happen often, but when it does the results can be terrible. Falling to the Dark Side — ‘into the Void’, as Jenni would put it — is inevitable.”

“If she might be so dangerous, why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because that would just make it worse. She’s empathic, in a way that Jedi aren’t — we can sense emotions, but we usually need to focus on it. I think she does it as automatically as breathing.”

“And sensing distrust in everyone around her would just push her over the edge even faster.” Ahsoka nodded, and Ghent rubbed his forehead. “Force, what a mess! Isn’t there anything you could have done to prepare us just in case?”

“I did.” At Ghent’s cocked eyebrow she forced a smile. “You didn’t notice that today I trained you and your deputies in how to take down a single Jedi?”

His other eyebrow joined the first, then he suddenly looked thoughtful. “Pin the Jedi in one place as best we can, with multiple blasters firing from multiple directions. Explosive attacks from a distance would work, too.”

“Maybe. It would work better in a city than on a planet of small settlements, but that’s the best way for non-Jedi to take down a Jedi short of orbital bombardment.” Her gaze dropped, staring at the wind-blown pattern in the dust covering the synthecrete at her feet. “It might be better for _me_ for that matter, with all the sparring we’ve been doing she’s learned a lot about my fighting style and I’m lucky if I can get a touch on her at all. But I needed _something_ to take her mind off the silence, that we could do together so she could sense me in the Force.” She looked up again, a single tear running down her cheek. “Marshal, I don’t know what to do.”

And in an instant the young Togrutan changed from the admired Jedi Knight (even if she insisted that she’d never been more than a Padawan) and hardened war veteran to a child not much older than Ghent’s oldest boy, lost in a world she didn’t fully understand. Ghent found himself fighting to resist the urge to hug her and tell her that everything would be all right ... both because she might take the embrace wrong, and because he didn’t like to make promises he wasn’t sure he could keep. Instead, he cleared his throat as best he could of the sudden lump and asked, “Have you talked to her about —”

Ahsoka gasped and whirled, lightsaber instinctively leaping into her hand, as the oppressive sensation of the Dark Side of the Force washed over her. She looked around frantically, senses reaching out, searching for the sudden danger ... and the glassteel window to the library cubicle exploded out of its frame to hurtle across the street.

Even as she heard the high-pitched, enraged shriek coming from the now empty window she was running forward, lightsaber angled to block anything coming out of it, Marshal Tardun pounding along right behind her.

Then she slammed to a stop as the Force screamed a warning, just barely getting her lightsaber up in time to block a crackling ribbon of lightning whipping through the window. She held it, twisted to angle her lightsaber to catch a second strand, glanced through the window and stiffened at the sight of Jenni standing upright, legs and arms spread wide, blue-streaked white hair seeming to coruscate around her thrown back head as writhing strands of lightning radiated from her hands to score trails in the walls, hammer into the sparking remnants of the library console, flash through the window and past her.

Then Jenni’s gaze dropped, and at the sight of her yellow-iris eyes Ahsoka cried out ... and then screamed as the break in her concentration allowed the force lightning she’d been blocking to hammer into her. She spasmed as every nerve in her body seemed to light up, falling backward into the street.

“ ‘Soka!” The shout came at the same instant that the pain stopped, and a moment later a gentle hand rolled her onto her back, the fingers of the other hand pressing into one side of her neck. She forced open her eyelids to see Jenni, a concerned expression on her face ... and not a hint of yellow in her eyes.

“Jenni, raise your hands and back away slowly.”

Drawing on the Force to keep the pain from from driving her under as she so badly wanted, Ahsoka twisted to see the Marshal standing several meters away, blaster in a two-handed grip leveled at her friend. She managed to rasp out, “Marshal, it’s all right. She didn’t intend to hit me ... she wasn’t aiming at anything.”

Ghent hesitated, then lowered his blaster. “What _happened?_ ”

Jenni blushed. “I ... well ... I learned something and ... I lost it.” She rose and stepped over to look through the window she’d just come out of, and grimaced. “Someone needs to call Cort and tell him everything’s all right here, I was talking to him and ... well, the library’s gone. Good thing Defenate is overseeing the upgrade for _Life’s Gift_ ’s hold.”

Ahsoka ignored the burning pain that seemed to fill her from the soles of her feet to the tiny montrals on top of her head and climbed to her feet, swaying until Jenni caught her around her waist and pulled an arm around her friend’s shoulders. The Togrutan rasped, “What did he tell you that upset you so badly?”

She felt Jenni’s shoulders stiffen under her arm, but she just said, “Let’s get you to the medtech first, I’ll tell you after.”

/\

Half an hour later Ahsoka sighed in relief as the pain-deadening effect of the multiple bacta injections kicked in, though she suspected the anesthetic effect wouldn’t last long enough. Thel Serat was surprised she’d been able to walk to his office even with help, and from the way she’d felt like a badly seared piece of meat she believed him.

Now she sat on a stool, Jenni standing behind her holding up her shaking arms, her hanging lekku still twitching spasmodically against upper breasts and neck, as Thel finished wrapping bacta bandages around her bare chest to cover the large weeping, almost skinless patch right below her breasts where the Force lightning had hit her. He’d wanted to stick her in a bacta tank, but she’d refused ... maybe later ( _probably_ later, she didn’t think she’d ever been more grateful for that ancient universal healant), but she had things to do first.

Wrapping done, Jenni lowered Ahsoka’s arms and the Togrutan spun on the stool to look up at her friend. She reached out to the Human’s presence in the Force, both make herself more open to Jenni and to heighten her awareness of Jenni’s emotional state. “So Jenni, what did you learn from Cort that was so upsetting?”

She felt Jenni’s anger explode, and Jenni reached back through the Force to Ahsoka as she fought back against the conflagration. But this time there wasn’t a hint of her inner turmoil on her face, no hint of yellow in her eyes. Then the moment was past, and Jenni was shaking her head as she turned and sat on the office’s bed facing Ahsoka. “Later, when Cort is back in the loop. There’s something more important. Serat, can I borrow your tablet?”

“Sure.” The medtech scooped his tablet off the nearby counter and handed it over. Jenni typed on the screen for a few moments, then handed it to Ahsoka. “How hard do you think it would be for someone here to make one of these?”

Ahsoka glanced down at the tablet at the picture of a slave collar, the type used by bounty hunters and slavers before they chipped their acquisitions. Her shock brightened the blue stripes against the white of her lekku. “No, we are _not_ blowing your head off!”

Jenni sighed, shoulders slumping. She rubbed at her face as the office door slid open, the Marshal stepping through with his blaster gripped in one hand hanging at his side, ignoring the sight of Ahsoka's bare breasts to focus on Jenni. “What’s the shouting?”

Ahsoka handed him the tablet. “She wants us to put one of these ... these _monstrosities_ on her!”

Ghent accepted the tablet with his free hand while holstering his blaster, his eyebrows rising at the picture on the display. He looked up at Jenni. “Really?”

Jenni nodded. “Yes.” Looking over at Ahsoka, she continued, “I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with Void Slaves, but we found that even those that voluntarily dive in inevitably become sociopaths. For those that are pulled under by the undertow, well ...” She shrugged. “Our technical term is ... was —” She grimaced as Ahsoka felt her pain and anger surge for a moment. “— ‘bug-nuts crazy’. And I’m being pulled under. Waking up in the Now, I could probably survive if I wasn’t a Dancer. But I _am_ a Dancer, the last survivor of the Dahlia Bond — of _all_ the Youxia Bonds — and the Silence ...”

She shrugged again, but her gaze stayed fixed on Ahsoka and the former Padawan could feel her grim determination. “From what Serat” — She nodded at the medtech — “said about your recovery time in the bacta tank I think I can hold it together long enough, and we can take on your Hunter together. I _don’t_ expect to hold it together through that, but at least I can go down fighting. If I don’t kill him myself I’m sure I can at least distract him enough to give you the opening you need. After that ... talk to Cort about what he told me, you’ll need to decide for yourself what to do about it. You’d know better than me, anyway.”

Ghent had lifted his gaze from the tablet to stare at Jenni. “Are you sure about this?” When Jenni nodded he sighed regretfully. “Yeah, we can make one of these easy enough. But what’s to stop you from just making it pop off? You _are_ a Jedi ... or whatever ... after all.”

Jenni grinned, and to Ahsoka’s surprise it was actually genuine. “We ... ‘Force-users’ —” She glanced at Ahsoka, her grin turning sly. What a _prosaic_ term for those like us, you people have no _poetry_ in your souls.” She looked back at the Marshal as he chuckled. “Anyway, we _Force-users_ aren’t gods. I have no idea how the lock works, so ...” She shrugged yet again. “My sense of the current of the Tao would warn me when I’m about to set it off, but is unlikely to do more to guide me. I doubt the universe wants to inflict a dangerous lunatic on you.”

“All right, I’ll —”

“NO.”

Everyone in the room turned to look at Ahsoka. Jenni slid off the bed to lay a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “ ‘Soka —”

“NO!” She knocked Jenni’s hand away. “I said we are _not_ blowing your head off! There has to be another —”

She froze at a sudden thought that in retrospect was blindingly obvious, and Jenni blanched at the abrupt wave of fear. “Ahsoka? What’s wrong?”

Ahsoka took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and released her fear into the Force as she’d been trained. She’d never been the best student of that foundational technique of the Jedi Order (not helped by the fact that her Master wasn't much better), but this time it helped ... mostly, at least. Opening her eyes, she forced a smile for her friend. “What if you’re not alone in your head?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter up, and only slightly delayed due to Christmas preparations! The next chapter is likely to be delayed rather more due the actual holiday, though....


	8. Everything Comes With a Cost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, one more chapter before Christmas! And the last chapter of the year, so to all my readers celebrating Christmas and New Year's, a joyful and safe holiday to you.

_What if you’re not alone in your head?_

The words seemed to hang in the air, and Ahsoka gasped as all sense of Jenni through the Force vanished. Her friend was still there, to sight ... and sound, when she turned to the Marshal and medtech. “Could me and Ahsoka have some privacy, please?” But when the two men nodded and left the room, and the door whooshed shut, so far as Ahsoka could sense through the Force she was alone.

Jenni had watched the men leave, and now she turned to hop back up onto the bed and looked at Ahsoka, her expression calm. “When you made that suggestion, you were afraid. Why?”

“I ... well ...” She was sure the blue stripes of her lekku were brightening again with her embarrassment. “I got the impression that everyone in your Bond were ... intimate. You did say it was common for Bonds even if you didn't say it was for _your_ Bond.”

Jenni nodded. “You're right, we were. At least, us girls were with the guys and each other. Henrik — one of the guys — would have been bisexual but Kaulana — the other guy — wasn’t so Henrik was heterosexual instead. So is it the actual sex that scares you, or are you worried about how your friends would take it when they learned you’re in an intimate relationship?”

“The sex, really. Since I walked out on the Order, my yearmates, what few acquaintances in the Order I’ve made during the war will probably think I’m capable of anything. Jedi who choose to leave aren’t well thought of.” She giggled suddenly, and if Jenni heard the nervous edge to her humor the Human ignored it. “They probably think I’ve been in bed with a different man every night, you wouldn’t _believe_ the rumors that you hear in the crèche! When actually ...” She shrugged. “I think it was the sex that kept me from thinking of this until a few minutes ago. It’s an obvious solution, after all.”

“Yes, it is,” Jenni agreed, “but even though I told you already, you don’t really understand. Yes, sex can be intimate whether you’re getting hammered into the mattress or in a long, slow cuddle, and joining a Bond generally means sleeping with whoever in the Bond shares your preferences. But the truth is that the _mental_ intimacy is what many Dancers couldn’t risk — or adjust to sometimes, there were Dancers that would break their ties. When the bond is formed, both individuals see _everything_ about each other ... every hidden fear, desire, regret, all of it, along with those memories they cling to the hardest. For that one moment they see each other as God must see us. It won’t happen again, not for that pair, but they won’t forget it, either. And then after, _always_ knowing what each other is feeling, _always_ having your mind and memories open to your Bonded — even able to share each other’s physical senses, sometimes without meaning to.” She giggled, though to Ahsoka she still remained an empty hole in the Force. “Half the reason orgies are common within Bonds is because having all the emotions and sensations of _someone_ _else’s_ sex in your head while you’re trying to negotiate, study, spar, sleep, whatever, is _so_ distracting! So if it’s going to happen, why not have it all happen at the same time?”

Ahsoka surprised herself by laughing, though she was sure the blues of her lekku must be positively glowing by now from what she was certain had to be an almost death-dealing level of embarrassment, Jenni joining her. As their mirth settled, Jenni said, “I know this is practically the opposite of the lack of attachments — the celibacy — the Order demands, what you were raised to. Do you really think you can handle it? If it turns out you can’t, not only will I be pulled under by the undertow into the Void, you’ll probably be pulled in with me.”

The last of Ahsoka’s humor fled, and she straightened on her stool and took a deep breath. “Yes, I can do this.” A moment later, Jenni was off the bed, kneeling in front of her with her arms around her waist and sobbing into her stomach, her presence filled with relief and gratitude flooding back into the Force. After a frozen moment, Ahsoka hesitantly wrapped her arms around Jenni’s shoulders.

/\

Now dressed in a loose tunic that hung to her midsection along with her panties, just as she was about to be lowered into the bacta tank, Ahsoka finally thought to ask. “Jenni, while we were talking, I couldn’t sense you through the Force at all. How did you do that?”

“Oh, that.” Jenni grinned up at her from where she was leaning against the wall ... she hadn’t stopped smiling since she’d calmed down; Ahsoka had already quietly told the Marshal that Jenni would have no trouble staying rational until Ahsoka was out of the bath, not with hope to give her strength. But Jenni was still speaking: “Advanced technique, where you literally become one with the current of the Tao. On the plus side, since you are such an integral part of the current there’s no separate entity to sense. The downside, though, is that you become an automaton, an observer as your body speaks and acts on its own.”

“A ‘downside’?” Ahsoka repeated. “But isn’t that the goal ... to be guided by the Force? That sounds like what the Order strives for, and even more for your ... ‘go with the flow’.”

“When you’re like that the Tao isn’t guiding, it’s driving,” Jenni rebutted. “What the Tao wants to do isn’t necessarily what _you_ want to do — and yes, your own wishes are important. If our own desires don’t matter, why did sentience evolve in the first place?”

“I’ll have to think about that.” Ahsoka frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then grinned … grinned wider when Jenni stiffened, undoubtedly picking up the feeling inspired by her sudden impish thought. “Oh, and intimacy isn’t totally unknown to Jedi. When I get out, remind me to tell you about the Altisian Jedi.” With that, she signaled Thel to lower her into the tank.

The last sight through the clear tube of the bacta tank a giggling Ahsoka took with her as she sank into the lassitude that came with being immersed in the healing fluid around her was the sharp look Ghent was sending her friend and future lover.

/oOo\

Quill Bolera didn’t even bother to curse his lack of training as a sensor as he fell out of his meditative state — the weeks he’d spent searching one scattered settlement after another of this misbegotten hole of a planet for an errant Padawan had taken him past boredom and frustration deep into the simmering anger that was the closest any Dark Sider came to calm. That faux-calm had been necessary to interact with the inhabitants of this self-important backwater, and had helped him resist the urge to grab one of the women and play — the population was simply too small for that, the woman would have been missed and suspicion naturally focused on him. Before he had sensed _something_ through the Force he had been considering giving up on the hunt and leaving a virus in the local subspace transceiver to send an alert if it detected _Riptide_ leaving the planet ... and taking a few women with him, for entertainment on the three-week journey back to civilization. And he’d have left some presents for the biggest settlements behind, launched from orbit.

But he _had_ sensed something through the Force, and unfortunately, as useful as his ‘calm’ had been for his attempt at meditation, that attempt had failed to shed any more light on that hint. The hint had only lasted a few seconds, maybe as much as half a minute, before it vanished and all he had was a direction. And that was all his attempt at meditation had given him, though he supposed the verification was useful.

 _But it_ is _a direction, and that’s more than I had before_. Rising to his feet, he grabbed his tablet to pull up a hologram of the settlements around him. He would have to turn at ... not quite a right angle to the search pattern he’d been following, but close. And there were at least half-a-dozen settlements along the direction he’d be taking now, next to one of this continent’s major rivers, and a few more before hitting an ancient mountain range close to the east coast.

It was going to take time, but at least now he had a goal.

/oOo\

Chancellor Palpatine — or rather Darth Sidious in his guise of Chancellor Palpatine — was standing at his office window looking down on his kingdom, Coruscant stargazing. Things were still going well — the near-disaster of the discovery of the chips in the clone troopers prevented; the Outer Rim sieges beginning, spreading out and isolating the Jedi even more, making them easy prey when the time came to sweep them from the board; Anakin growing estrangement from his former master thanks to Obi-Wan’s siding with the Jedi Council during Ahsoka’s expulsion and trial (if only in his heart), and his trust in the Chancellor he fondly believed to be the few true friends he had left absolute — yes, victory was so close the Sith Master could _taste_ it ... and it was _sweet_.

The only flaw in his enjoyment was that the Hunter he’d sent after Ahsoka _hadn’t reported back!_ His last report had contained his findings on Milagro before his departure for Trey, and even with the combined estimated travel time to and from that backwater ... Quill Bolera, was it? yes ... Quill must have been on Trey for weeks now. And Darth Sidious could _not_ escape the feeling that there was an Ahsoka-shaped piece missing from the picture of his gathering victory, even if that picture was clear and becoming clearer.

 _Let’s see if that loose end is still on Trey. If she isn’t, I can start the manhunt again in the systems around Trey until my tool finally reports back. If she escaped before he could arrive, they’ll pick up her trail that much faster. And if it turns out he’s already disposed of her and is on his way back .._. He shrugged. That was how insurance worked, resources expended that you hoped were wasted.

Decision made, he turned from the window and strode over to his desk. Bringing up the control panel in his desk, he verified that the doors to his office were locked, closed the paneling over his office windows, and brought up the hologram of the galactic territory the Veil covered. The same miasma that blinded the Sight of the Jed, allowed him to mentally reach out to anywhere within his realm, but the number of inhabited systems within that vast territory was literally incalculable. Once Ahsoka had escaped off Coruscant he hadn’t considered trying to track her down himself for even a moment, but now with a likely system ...

Locating the Milagro system along the Corellian Run and then Trey off to one side in the Outer Rim, he _reached_ out through the Veil for the familiar feel of the young Padawan he’d met with her master on multiple occasions ... nothing. Sighing in disappointment, he shut down the map and was just closing the panel in his desk when he suddenly realized that he hadn’t sensed his Hunter, either. In fact, he hadn’t sensed anything ... and as lightly inhabited as Trey was he should still have sensed _something_. Even a planet inhabited by nothing but lower lifeforms should have been detectable!

He quickly reopened the panel and brought up the map. Locating Trey, he again _reached_ ... and found nothing. Either a pirate fleet had decided to not only raid that poverty-stricken backwater but expend the firepower necessary to wipe it clean of life ( _extremely_ unlikely), or some unknown factor was blocking the reach of his senses into that part of the Outer Rim.

Some quick checking of the systems around Trey (such as they were) revealed that whatever it was, was apparently restricted to the Trey system alone, and the secret Emperor (as he considered himself already) leaned back and stared thoughtfully at the galactic map. He had no other Hunters free to investigate, and with a Hunter perhaps already on Trey there was no point in sending mercenaries. _But_ ...

A vicious grin spread across his face and he opened the panel for his com. A few moments later the familiar voice of Naboo’s Senator responded, with no hologram as he'd expected at this hour. _“Chancellor, what’s happened?”_

“There’s no emergency, my dear. My apologies for calling so late, but I thought you would wish to know immediately. I believe I may have stumbled across the location of our wandering Padawan.”

A few minutes of conversation later and he leaned back with a self-satisfied smirk. Yes, this would do nicely. His warning of the bounty hunters pursuing Ahsoka and reassurances that with the Republic on the offensive in the Outer Rim she would not be missed in the Senate would send Amidala scurrying to find her friend and offer the protection of her diplomatic status. At worst she would return with better navigation data of the route to Trey and some word of Ahsoka’s intentions, at best with Ahsoka herself ... and once back on Coruscant he could consider how best to use them to further isolate Anakin.

And while Amidala was on her mission of mercy, his lackeys could use her absence to undermine her influence by portraying her as an impulsive, headstrong girl perhaps too young for the responsibilities of her position. The more intelligent Senators would never buy it, of course, but that  _august_ body was full of fools and his bought-and-paid-for lackeys (often the same people).

Yes, all was once again going as he had foreseen it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I doubt the Empire-spanning reach of the Emperor is official canon, but it is at least hinted at in what Wookiepedia calls Legends — when Mara Jade was an Emperor's Hand she was able to hear his voice wherever she was, and who knows how far away she was when the Emperor stuck his Last Command in her head just before he died on the Death Star? But there will still be limitations, and here's mine: even with his ability to 'observe' any planet in his future Empire there are a _lot_ of planets, and so one can hide by simply not being anywhere he would look (Obi-Wan hiding on Tatooine) or even next to a Vergence of the Force that would hide your presence in the Force (Yoda on Dagobah, with the added benefit of it being a _Dark Side_ Vergence and so an even more unlikely place to hide).
> 
> The line “ ... was heterosexual instead” is a variation of a line from Lois McMaster Bujold’s _Barrayar_. When the villain of the story tried to blow up the heroine’s marriage by telling her that her new husband was bisexual, her response was “He _was_ bisexual, now he’s monogamous.” The poor man didn’t quite know how to handle that....


	9. On the Edge

At the sound of the door chime Jenni looked up from her tablet, surprised. She had been grateful for Ahsoka’s trust and support, but had been less confident herself of her ability to maintain control. So after the young Togrutan had been placed in the bacta tank, she had asked Marshal Tardun for his advice on the most innocent feel-good fluff-piece of entertainment he knew of, completely devoid of a hint of politics. Ghent had come through, suggesting _Dew on the Sands_ , a vid-series about a Core World socialite whose bad investments cost her everything except for a single Outer Rim moisture farm, and her adventures learning how to make that farm work ... with the help of a _very_ handsome unmarried (and often exasperated) neighbor. With that show and enough food to last until Ahsoka was healed, Jenni had settled down in her room to enjoy a story she could understand in its broad outlines while pausing it occasionally to jot down yet another addition to an ever-growing list of cultural references Ahsoka could explain once she was healed. Jenni suspected that the Marshal had realized that she had essentially put herself under house arrest, because she hadn’t been disturbed since. Until now.

Pausing the latest episode just as Mott and Llyl were frantically working to repair a vaporator damaged by a sandstorm (and she guessed were going to end up in the same bed when they were done, but too exhausted to do anything about it), she called out, “Come in!”

The door slid aside to reveal the Marshal. “Jenni, we have a problem.”

/oOo\

Ahsoka blinked as the world slowly came into focus, her bacta tank-imposed lassitude fading away. From the height of the ceiling and the padded but extremely firm surface beneath her, she was lying on a mat on the infirmary floor. She could feel the expected weakness from the drugs mixed with the bacta, as if the world was sitting on her chest, and ... at the sensation of cloth on her stomach, she struggled up to brace herself on her elbows to find Jenni using a towel to wipe away the bacta residue coating her. At her movement Jenni looked up and smiled at her, but that smile was tight, the Human’s eyes worried.

Raising herself up had awakened a deep ache, and Ahsoka carefully lay back down and closed her eyes to turn her Force sense inward ... as she suspected, she’d been taken out of the bacta tank too early; she wasn’t in any danger, or even really disadvantaged, but she wasn’t going to be enjoying life for awhile. Without opening her eyes, she said, “I’m out of the tank early. Something’s wrong.”

“We’ll talk about it as soon as you’re clean and Serat has checked you over.”

“I don’t need to be checked, I just did. I’m fine, nothing a healing trance won’t fix.”

“A healing trance? Jedi can heal themselves?”

“Of course we can ... you can’t?”

Jenni shook her head. “Get your shirt off, I have a change of clothing that covers more and isn’t bacta-saturated, and you’ll want as much of this muck off as possible before you hop in the shower. No, we don’t heal ourselves, though we do heal faster, don’t get sick, live longer, whatever is required for where the Tao’s currents sweep us.”

Ahsoka sat up and stared at her friend for a long moment. “ ... don’t get sick. Live longer.” After a moment she shrugged, then tucked her lekku inside her shirt’s neckline, grabbed the lower hem of her shirt just below her breasts. She hesitated for a moment, then groaned at the effort it took to pull it over her head. It wasn’t like Jenni wasn’t going to get thoroughly acquainted with her breasts — along with the rest of her body — once they bonded. “Jedi heal at the same rate as everyone else, but can go into a trance that speeds it up. Same thing for disease. And we ... they ... those that don’t die violently ... don’t live any longer than anyone else.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised, it sounds like the Jedi can mostly do what the Youxia can, maybe better, but only if you force the issue.” Jenni toweled off the bacta fluids coating Ahsoka’s breasts, her manner as impersonal as any medtech (something for which Ahsoka was grateful, and more than a little ashamed at the depth of her gratitude), then shifted around to her back as she slumped forward. “Let’s get you in the shower and then that change of clothes. By then the drugs should have worn off, and the good Marshal is waiting.”

“All right.” Ahsoka waited as Jenni finished wiping her back, arms, head and lekku then helped her to her feet. She braced herself on the bed as Jenni pulled down her panties so she could step out of them, then with one arm around Jenni’s shoulder and Jenni’s arm around her waist staggered toward the shower. As Jenni started the water and set the temperature, Ahsoka asked, “Jenni, what’s wrong? Why the rush?”

Jenni hesitated, then shrugged as she helped Ahsoka into the shower stall and grabbed the soap and washcloth. “Your hunter must have sensed my tantrum, he’s headed this way. You had as much time in the tank as you did because he’s still stopping at each settlement between us and him, but he’ll be here in a few days.”

/\

Ahsoka carefully eased herself into her chair by the desk in the Marshal’s office, Jenni taking the chair beside her. By the time her shower was over she’d been steady enough to towel dry and dress herself, but she wasn’t quite ready to go leaping into combat yet.

Ghent had already asked how she was feeling (and Ahsoka had had no choice but to answer truthfully, thanks to the imminent combat), so now he waited until the pair were settled before getting down to business. “Jenni told you?” Ahsoka nodded, and he leaned back in his chair and continued, “I like to think I’m a good marshal, but even with the training you’ve given my men a Dark Sider with a lightsaber is above my level. So how do we handle this?”

“You’ve confirmed he has a lightsaber?”

Ghent nodded. “He’s not exactly flaunting it, but a waitress at one of the diners he’s eaten at saw it on his belt. She didn’t recognize it for what it is, but remembered it because she didn’t recognize it and was wondering what kind of tool it might be.”

Ahsoka frowned thoughtfully. “Okay — first thing, make sure that when he gets here you and your men are nowhere close to him ... out of town with landspeeders so you can get back in a hurry. Anything else, and he’ll pick up your hostile intent, go on alert.”

“That means we can’t tell anyone else.”

“That’s right. Jenni or I can trigger the alert to get everyone off the street when we confront him, that can be your signal to get back into town. When you arrive ...” Ahsoka paused as she considered what she remembered of the town’s layout. “ ... the same thing you did when you braced me and Jenni, only get _everyone_ up on the roofs. There you can take shots at him when you can — I don’t expect you to hit him, but it’ll be one more distraction. Just remember that he can reflect your shots back at you, so duck after each shot.”

“Makes sense.” Ghent straightened and touched a stud on his desk. A holograph of the town sprang up, and as he worked the controls a scattering of points of light appeared on rooftops along the main street. “We can use the pirate raid warning to get everyone off the streets and out of your way ... you’ll need to set it off at the same time you alert me when you’re ready to spring the trap. I’ll have my people stash blaster rifles here at the spots I’ve highlighted ahead of time so anyone can play, not just my deputies, and personal messages ready to send to the ones I think are up to this....”

/\

Ahsoka could feel herself tensing more and more as she followed Jenni toward the tiny house they’d been staying at, like a spring coiled too tight. Bonding was her idea and a price she was willing to pay to keep Jenni alive and sane, but now that they finally doing it she found she was edging beyond nervous into terrified, and mortified that Jenni’s own constant empathic sense meant there was no hiding it.

Then they were in their tiny shared main room, the front door hissed shut, and Jenni turned around to face her. “No sex.”

Ahsoka’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“No sex.” Jenni giggled, apparently amused at the total confusion Ahsoka was sure she was picking up. The Youxia stepped back to lean against the counter for food preparation and crossed her arms. “Ahsoka, I’m afraid I’ve accidentally misled you. Yes, adding a new Dancer to a Bond is usually followed by an orgy ... at least in _my_ bond ... but it doesn’t have to be. There’ll only be the two of us, so sex until you’re ready. It _is_ the sex that has you tighter than a drum, right? Not the bonding itself?”

“I ... well, yes ... but you ... needs?” Ahsoka sputtered out.

Now Jenni’s giggles turned into laughter as Ahsoka felt the blue stripes on her lekku brighten with embarrassment. When Jenni got herself under control, leaving only a broad grin, she said, “Sure, I wouldn’t mind having some fun in bed, you’re cute as a button and I’m wondering how much of my research is accurate — yes, I did some checking on erotic differences between Humans and Togrutans and I want to hear what you sound like.” (By now, Ahsoka was once again wondering if it was possible to die from embarrassment.) “But you’re supposed to enjoy it as much as I do, and even if you weren’t still sore from my tantrum you’d be too tense to enjoy it. I’m no longer a randy teenager, if only by a few years, I can wait.”

“I ...” Ahsoka’s tongue stumbled to a halt, the relief and gratitude filling her mixed with shame (and perhaps just a _dash_ of disappointment, something she was going to studiously ignore until later).

Jenni’s grin softened into a gentle smile, and she straightened up. “But we still need to to form our Bond, and don’t think putting off the sex means you get to dress up ... ‘skyclad’, the Western Wiccans called it, even if we’re doing this indoors instead of the sun in the middle of open wilderness — as open to each other physically as we will be mentally. So come on.” She walked toward the room they’d been using for sparring, shedding her clothing as she went.


	10. Rising to Battle

Quill Bolera grinned, his excitement stirring as he piloted his ship down towards the latest settlement along the line toward whatever he’d sensed almost a week earlier after dumping the supplies he’d purchased at the last settlement in orbit. (He had to have _some_ reason for visiting each town, after all, and he could pile up only so much in his hold.) He might not have had the sensor training that this kind of mission called for, but for the first time since his arrival on this Light-infest rock the Force was warning him that _something_ in the rapidly approaching buildings was dangerous — and to him personally, not just something that was a danger to the common herd but that any half-trained Sith (and Jedi, he would admit to himself if no one else) could handle. And he could only think of one thing ... or rather one _person_ ... on this backwater hole that could be that threat. _Finally!_

Then the ship was settled on a flat piece of ground on the settlement’s outskirts. It only took a few moments to shut down the engines, get his speeder bike out of the hold, and head into town. Really, the town was so small going on foot would have made more sense, if his exit might not need to be ... expedited.

As he rode along the main street his grin returned. The power of the Light Side that seemed to permeate the planet might be swamping his senses, but the Force user he could sense in a nearby eatery was practically glowing with joy-permeated power of the Force. Whatever Ahsoka had found here, it had made her a very happy Togrutan indeed.

Quill smirked as he parked the speeder bike in front of the eatery. It was such a shame that he’d have to spoil everything for her....

/\

Ahsoka was _not_ in proper form for combat. She knew her pursuer was coming, that in minutes she would be in yet another life or death struggle with innocent lives on the line (she had no illusions how her pursuer would act once he was revealed for what he was, she had seen too many examples of the ruin those that fell to the Dark Side — slaves of the Void, to use Jenni's poetic turn of phrase — left in their wake); she should have been preparing herself mentally, focusing on the battle to come, releasing her fears and worries into the Force so she could enter combat calm and in control ... she’d never been particularly good at it, any more than her master, but she should at least _try_.

Instead, in spite of the fact that it had been a day since their bonding, that she still ached to her core from Jenni’s Force lightning she’d gotten in the way of, that she was about to fight for her life and the lives of others ... in spite of all of that, she could _not_ keep the joy bubbling up from her heart and spreading a broad smile across her face. And it wasn’t just because of Jenni’s welcoming joy still blazing in her heart.

She had recognized how lonely ... how _incomplete_ ... Jenni had been thanks to the loss of her Bond — in the life Ahsoka had seen when they bonded, family and close friends had been a constant and even when the Void Slaves’ coup had driven the survivors of Jenni’s new Bond (all two of them) underground shortly after her sixteenth birthday she had still had that Bond. But Ahsoka hadn’t recognized how lonely _she herself_ had been. She may not have been bonded mind-to-mind with anyone but Anakin — and that Padawan-Master bond like a candle to the noonday sun compared to this one — but she had still been a Jedi ... one among a united whole, with drive and purpose. She had lost all that when she had walked away from the Order, alone in a cold and hostile galaxy, more cold and hostile than she’d imagined. Now ...

_Now I’ll never be alone again_ , she thought as she once again focused for a moment on Jenni’s presence in the back of her mind.

That presence ‘laughed’ back at her. _“Time to pay attention to the real world, ‘Snips’, our target just landed,”_ Jenni’s mental presence announced.

_“Like you’re one to talk!”_ And it was true, Ahsoka’s own joy was dim in comparison to Jenni’s blazing happiness and gratitude.

_“Maybe, but I have a_ bit _more experience. When this is over, we’ll need to talk about Barriss Offee.”_

The statement came like cold water to the face, Ahsoka’s joy guttering from the shock of that statement, and the wave of bitter anger she still felt whenever she thought of how her former friend betrayed her swept through her yet again. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and released that anger into the Force ... and much of the joy that had been making her giddy.

_“Better. And just in time, he’s here. Showtime. Remember the plan, we need to make this_ fast _before he has time to involve innocents in spite of the evacuation.”_

_“Right.”_ Ahsoka took another deep breath, and stepped out of the eatery to face her hunter with Jenni right behind her.

/\

Quill was surprised when _two_ women stepped out of the eatery to meet him: his target, dressed in her usual skimpy, tight battle dress; and a Human dressed in a skirt with a loose top draped over her torso. The human’s hair was dyed white and blue in a pattern that reversed the colors of Ahsoka’s lekku and montrals.

He was even more surprised when an ear-splitting siren went off for several seconds, and blast shutters slammed down over doors and windows all along the street.

“That was a warning siren, to alert everyone that they need to evacuate the town,” the unknown woman said. “Congratulations, you’re considered as dangerous as a pirate raid.”

Quill focused on her — he already had the measure of the former Padawan — and frowned. She was confident, supremely so, but she was _weak_. He could barely detect her presence in the Force at all. Certainly she was too weak to be a Jedi, even if the metal tube in her hand was a lightsaber. (Lightsabers weren’t exactly standardized, one could never be sure until they were used.) He smirked, this was going to be fun. Ignoring the fact that they’d obviously known he was coming, and the way the Togrutan that was the only one that was remotely a threat was shifting to one side, he asked, “And you think you’re up to dealing with a threat as dangerous as a pirate raid?”

“We shall see, won’t we? I’m Jenni, by the way.” The Human hefted the metal tube in her hand, and a bright white blade sprang humming from its end. As Ahsoka copied her — her blade also a pure white, unlike the shorter green blades of the pair she had typically wielded before — Jenni chanted,

For ten years I have been polishing this sword;  
Its frosty edge has never been put to the test.  
Now I am holding it and showing it to you, sir:  
Is there anyone suffering from injustice?

_A complete lunatic. Where did the runt find her, and why is one of the oh-so-noble Jedi letting her die pointlessly? Are they lovers? She wouldn’t be the first Jedi that ran wild after leaving the Order_. Not that it mattered — the additional Human meant he was facing two instead of the one he’d been expecting, but he’d long since learned that if you knew what you were doing, multiple opponents that weren’t trained to work together made it _easier_ , not harder. Two Jedi working together could be dangerous, the Force helped them coordinate, but Jenni was hardly a Jedi. Still, he supposed she could possibly be a distraction, best not to take unnecessary chances.

Without a hint of warning he sprang toward her, his own lightsaber leaping into his hand and its fiery red blade springing to life as it swung straight for Jenni’s torso — and she took a step back as she parried his actual strike for her neck instead of the feint ... and the follow-up strike that would have taken off an arm, and the strike that _would_ have sliced her in half at the waist, and the one that would have done the same from neck to groin ... and at the Force’s warning he whirled and stepped to one side as he parried Ahsoka’s attempt to drive her blade through his back, so that the combatants formed three points of a triangle. _This might be harder than I thought_.

Quill knew other Hunters liked to taunt their prey as they brought them down, but he considered it rather pointless to waste the effort on the dead. So without a word he stepped toward his target, red humming blade shrieking as it impacted the Padawan’s glowing white blade again and again, before spinning away to block Jenni’s attacks as she came to her friend’s defense ... to _easily_ block Jenni’s attacks, and he frowned.

He wasn’t surprised that the Human’s skill with a lightsaber wasn’t up to a Jedi Knight’s level, or even a Padawan’s — a _new_ Padawan’s. What he _did_ find surprising was she didn’t even rise to the level of her defense against his first assault. But _why_? Who was stupid enough to focus purely on defense? It had to be some kind of trap, but he couldn’t see how.

_It doesn’t matter what kind of trap it is if they don’t get a chance to —_

He leaped back away from Jenni as suddenly blaster bolts started to rain down from the roofs of the buildings around them. Most of them slammed down into the synthecrete street around the pair, but both he and Jenni whirled their lightsabers above their heads to deflect multiple bolts ... and several hammered into his speeder bike, dropping the sparking, smoking ruin to the roadway as flames began leaping from its engine. _Bastards!_ He had _liked_ that bike....

Even as he cursed his ambushers he saw his opportunity, shifted position to place his back to a wall and Jenni between him and Ahsoka running toward them through the hail of blaster fire (knocking aside a few bolts of her own as she came), and used the Force to activate the wrist shield he’d taken off a Mandalorian he’d killed as he used his lightsaber to deflect bolts toward Jenni at point-blank range.

She whirled to face him and deflected the bolts, several back at him, and he used the wrist shield to reflect them straight back. They hammered into her chest even as another shot from a roof hammered into her back, and the Human dropped limply to the road as her presence in the Force vanished like a snuffed-out candle.

“Jenni!” his target screamed as she leaped over the corpse and slashed blindly at Quill. He grinned as he parried her strikes — apparently they _had_ been lovers, and nothing made a target as furious ... and as vulnerable ... as the death of a loved one. And someone on a rooftop was shouting for them to cease fire. Once Ahsoka was dead he could take to the rooftops to make his way back to his ship, and kill a few of his ambushers on the way.

He’d won. His only regret was that he wouldn’t be able to grab some women to take with him, and since they’d apparently been tracking him since his arrival he couldn’t drop in on another settlement instead to pick some up there. But he’d definitely be giving _this_ settlement a gift from orbit before he left.

_Time to end this_. He parried Ahsoka’s last wild slash and riposted, fast enough that the Padawan was only barely able to parry it ... and his next strike, and the next, and the next. She backed up, trying to break contact, but he pressed her. She stepped back again and her heel caught on her lover’s corpse, tumbling her backwards onto the synthecrete of the road. Quill stepped over the corpse, batting away a few blaster bolts as some of the men on the roofs opened fire again — and staggered as the worst pain he’d ever felt in his life pierced through him, up through his torso and into his chest. He looked down, gaping at the sight of the corpse he was straddling glaring up at him, leaning up on one elbow. Her other hand held her lightsaber, its blade stabbing up through his groin. She yanked sideways, the lightsaber’s blade burning through heart, lung, and rib cage as it ripped out of his torso, and as the world went dark his last emotion was stunned amazement that according to the Force the Human that had killed him didn’t exist.

/\

Ahsoka was gasping as she rolled to her feet. She’d been right on both counts — the damage she had suffered from Jenni’s Force lightning that the bacta tank hadn’t had the time to heal hadn’t hindered her at all, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt. But the flash of pain she had felt from Jenni just before her bondmate had vanished from her Force sense had given the former Padawan a nasty shock — it had felt just like all too many clone troopers that had died around her during her two years at war, and only the fact she could still sense Jenni’s presence in her mind had kept her from panicking. Though that presence had had an odd feel to it, even after the less than a day since their bonding ... muted, distant somehow. It must have been the effect of Jenni fully ‘immersing herself in the current of the Tao’, as she would put it.

But that muting effect was gone now and Jenni’s pain was back, burning across back and chest. But Jenni didn’t seem to notice it — she simply stood over the man that she’d killed, staring down at his corpse with the oddest mix of emotions ... a sort of singing emptiness mixed with worry. She looked up as Ahsoka approached and silently asked, “ _Shouldn’t I feel something?_ ”

“ _Feel something? Oh!_ ” Ahsoka remembered the piece of poetry Jenni had recited just before the fight started, and realized that not once throughout her vision of Jenni’s life — not a single time — had she seen any combat. This was Jenni’s first kill. _Or at least the first face-to-face_ , she thought as she remembered the ritual that had ended with Jenni trapped in a Force vortex of some sort, and with the deaths of every single person on Trey with a significant connection to the Force. (Terra, the colonists were debating changing the planet’s name to the original, and the yeas were winning.)

Ahsoka laid a hand on Jenni’s shoulder. “You will. You’ll have nights you spend in meditation because you can’t face your dreams. Believe it. I'll be there with you.”

Jenni nodded, but flinched at the new weight on her shoulder as her burning pain jumped. Ahsoka’s eyes narrowed and she hastily tore open Jenni’s charred top, checking the improvised armor she’d worn underneath it. “What’s wrong? Didn’t the armor hold? Weren’t the blasters set to half strength? Thel, Ghent, get over here, Jenni’s hurt!”

By now the blast shields over windows and doors had risen, and as Thel and Ghent ran over Ahsoka scrabbled at the armor’s clasps. The armor fell away, and the medtech hissed. “Crap, we forgot about the heat transfer! You’re going into the bacta tank right now.” He shouted for the bystanders gathering around to fetch a stretcher.

“Yeah,” Ghent agreed, staring at the strips of skin that had pealed away with the armor. “Jenni, why aren’t you screaming?”

“I definitely know the pain is there,” Jenni said, “but we Dancers can immerse ourselves in the Tao’s currents enough that the pain doesn’t interfere with whatever needs doing. Ahsoka?”

Ahsoka nodded. “Jedi can as well, through a kind of walking meditation. It does require us to split our attention, though.” She looked over as one of the deputies she’d met the day she'd gone into the bacta tank herself hurried up, pushing a stretcher hovering on its own repulsor ahead of him. “Let’s get you in the tank before your Tao decides you feeling your pain won’t get in the way of anything.”

A Jenni beginning to tremble from shock nodded. “You’re beginning to figure out how it works for the Dancers. Yes, let's.” She lay down on the stretcher, and the clean pad Thel had yanked from the foot of the stretcher to its head, and Thel and the deputy guided it toward Thel’s office.

Ahsoka and Ghent began to follow, when another deputy ran up to them. “Marshal, Cort’s on the com, he says another ship is coming into orbit!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poetry is a translation of "The Swordsman" by Jia Dao, a poet from the Tang dynasty (roughly the early 7th century A.D. to the early 10th), and nicely sums up the Youxia spirit of knight errantry.


	11. Best Friends Forever

Padme rushed into the infirmary, and sagged with relief at the sight of Ahsoka standing by the bacta tank, one hand on its clear surface as she turned her gaze from the young Human woman in the tank to the newcomer.

A puffing Marshal entered behind her. “You didn’t ... let me finish,” he gasped out. “Jenni’s the injured one ... not Ahsoka.”

Ahsoka stepped away from the tank. “Yeah, I’m fine, and Jenni will be.”

“Ahsoka ...” Padme hesitated, knowing Jedi’s dislike of personal shows of affection, then threw aside restraint and stepped forward to throw her arms around her young friend. “I’m so happy you’re all right, we were worried about you.”

Ahsoka hesitantly returned the embrace for a moment before gently pushing Padme away. “ ‘We’?”

“Yes, Obi-Wan is worried about you and Anakin is desperate, he’ll be so happy to hear you’re all right. Even the Chancellor has been searching for you, he’s the one who warned me of the bounty hunters after you and where I could find you.” Padme hesitated at the odd expression that crossed Ahsoka’s face. “You ... did know about the bounty hunters?”

Ahsoka opened her mouth, paused, then glanced at the bacta tank before turning her attention back to Padme, her expression hard. “Yes, I knew about them. A gang of bounty hunters jumped me on Coruscant, again on Milagro. And I’m sure when you landed you noticed the ship parked on the outskirts of town? That belonged to a hunter we took down just before you arrived.” She glanced at the tank again, her face softening. “Once Jenni gets out of the tank we’ll have to see about breaking into it, I’m sure it’s booby-trapped.”

Padme’s eyes widened in surprised speculation. During one of Annie’s rants after his Padawan’s departure he’d mentioned the bizarre rumors circulating in the Temple about what Ahsoka was getting up to now that she’d left the Order, and Padme had been as outraged as he was — just because Ahsoka hadn’t been able to trust the Order after the way it had treated her didn’t mean she’d turn into a slut! _But maybe there’s a kernel of truth, after all — romance at least, not the promiscuity_. She hoped so, her Togrutan friend deserved to be happy as much as Annie. _And at least she won’t have to hide it_.

Padme fought to keep the momentary bitterness that stabbed through her off her face, but she must have let something slip because Ahsoka’s gaze sharpened. For a moment Padme thought she was going to ask about whatever she’d seen, but instead she grinned. “And when did you intend to tell me that you’re pregnant?”

Padme felt the world go hazy, lightheaded from the shock. “I’m pregnant?”

Ahsoka’s face went blank. “You didn’t know?”

“No. I _hoped_ but ...” Then it finally sank in, and Padme reached out to embrace her friend and spun them around, laughing joyfully. “I’m pregnant!”

“Let me go!” Though it was hard to take Ahsoka’s protest seriously, the way she was laughing ... laughter with a definite edge of pain to it.

Padme hastily let her back down. “I thought you said you were fine!”

“I am, just the remnants of a nasty shock I took just before the hunter arrived, I haven’t had time for a healing trance yet to clear up the last of the damage. So obviously that was good news, who’s the father? I must have met him at some point, considering me and Sky Guy seemed to spend as much time with you as we did in the Temple.”

Again Padme fought to keep her expression clear, and again she must have failed — Ahsoka froze, her eyes going wide. “Anakin? It’s _Anakin?_ When did _that_ happen?!”

Padme frantically looked around. Then sighed with relief. The Marshal had discreetly let himself out once it was obvious she and Ahsoka were friends, and the Human woman — Jenni’, had Ahsoka said? — was asleep, thanks to the drugs mixed with the tank’s bacta to keep patients from dying of boredom. “Shhhhh! Not so loud! No one can know.”

“ ... oops?” The blue stripes across Ahsoka’s lekku brightened with embarrassment. “I get it, I won’t tell anyone. But you sure moved fast after I left, was I in the way or something?”

“It was before you were assigned to Anakin. We were secretly married just after the war started.”

“Married even? Wow! But if _I_ missed that I’ll bet Obi-Wan doesn’t know, either, does he? Are you going to tell him once it becomes obvious you slipped up and got pregnant?”

Padme frowned repressively at her grinning friend. “I didn’t ‘slip up’, I got pregnant deliberately — after you left I thought Anakin needs more ‘attachments’, whatever the Jedi Code might say. And no, Obi-Wan doesn’t know. Do you think I should tell him?”

Ahsoka’s grin softened into a gentle smile, her gaze flicking over yet again to the bacta tank for a moment. “ ‘Attachments’. Yeah, I’ve pretty much decided that part of the Code is nonsense, so good for you. Obi-Wan?” She frowned thoughtfully for a moment. “I ... can’t really say. He’s formed his own attachment to Anakin, but he’s also rather ... inflexible, I guess ... about the Order’s rules. But you can’t hide it forever — unless you don’t intend to let the children know who their father is? No, that won’t work, either. Whether Anakin’s known as their father or a _really_ close friend of the family, the Council will still consider it too strong an attachment.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s just a matter of timing, whether you want the big reveal to be during or after the war.”

Padme considered Ahsoka’s advice and thought her friend was probably right, she and Annie were going to have to talk it over the next time their schedules overlapped. She had no idea how he was going to take it, though, in spite of his issues with the Order’s restrictions he was still devoted to it.

But that was an issue for another day, and she focused on Ahsoka’s ... friend ... floating in the bacta tank. The Human was beautiful, and older than Ahsoka, and the coloration of the waves of hair floating about her head ... “So how long have you and ... Jenni, was it? ... Jenni been an item yourselves? That must have been the whirlwind romance you thought I and Annie had, you haven’t been on Trey all that many weeks.”

The blush on Ahsoka’s lekku was back, and she stammered an attempted denial for a moment before giving up with a sigh. “How did you know?”

Padme giggled. “The way you can’t keep your eyes off the bacta tank is a big hint, but really, her hair style matching you lekku’s pattern?”

“Oh.” It was Ahsoka’s turn to giggle. “Actually, that’s a coincidence, that was her style when I met her.”

“It was?” Padme’s giggles turned into laughter. “In that case, she might want to change that if you intend to hide your relationship.” Then as Ahsoka shook her head ruefully, Padme sobered. “You won’t be coming back with me, will you?”

“No. No, we won’t. We can’t stay here, but Coruscant ... unless I rejoin the Order I can’t think of a more dangerous place for me in the entire Republic, too many bounty hunters. And now I can’t rejoin the Order, not ever again.”

Padme sighed, but nodded. “I thought as much. Annie will be disappointed, but he’ll understand.” Now it was her turn to glance toward the bacta tank. “How long until she comes out?”

“Days, maybe even a week. She lost a lot of skin, and her internal organs were almost cooked.”

Padme’s eyes widened. “That bad? I’m surprised she’s alive. But I’m afraid that means I won’t be able to wait to meet her when she gets out. Just the trip out and back is really more time away from Coruscant than I should be taking, even with the new advances in the war. By the way, you _do_ have an up-to-date nav-chart for the run back to Milagro? It would be nice to shave a week off the return trip.”

“Yes, we do. Defenate’s on board our ship, I’ll have her send it to you.” But her eyes tracked back toward the bacta tank, and Padme took her by the arm and gently pulled her toward the door.

“Come on. I know you’re worried about her, however pointless it might be — she’s in a bacta tank and it isn’t a disease, if she hasn’t died yet she isn’t going to — I’m the same way with Anakin. But you can’t just sit around waiting, so why don’t you come back to my skiff? I can give you a meal like you haven’t had since the last time we ate together, and we can catch up.

/\

Ahsoka protested, but let herself be pulled toward the door. “ _Jenni, are you sure?_ ”

“ _Yes, I’ll be fine. I think ..._ ” Jenni broke off for a wave of exhaustion, that Ahsoka guessed signaled a yawn. “ _... I think the current is sweeping me toward sleep anyway, the drugs must finally be taking effect. The Tao must have decided I’ve been awake long enough. So catch up with your friend, then go into your own healing trance. Just don’t forget that anything you tell her the Chancellor is likely to hear as well._ ”

“ _All right, I will_.” Ahsoka wasn’t surprised to find Aja, Padme’s secretary/bodyguard, waiting outside the infirmary with the Marshal, and after Ahsoka let Ghent know that everything was all right the three started walking back in companionable silence toward the edge of town where Padme’s skiff was parked.

Then Ahsoka twitched as Jenni spoke up again. “ _Ahsoka, you need to have Padme take a message with her, for Barriss Offee_.”

“ _And why would I want to send that murderous traitor a message?_ ”

Jenni paused while Ahsoka fought to again release into the Force the rage that thoughts of the Mirialan woman that had framed her for murder could still fan to life many weeks later. When Ahsoka’s inner turmoil eased, she continued: “ _‘Soka, would you say Barriss was your friend?_ ”

“ _Yes_.”

“ _A good friend?_ ”

“ ... _yes_.”

“ _A loyal and valiant Jedi?_ ”

“ _You saw my life when we bonded, yes!_ ”

“ _You know I didn’t really_ see _your whole life, just the highlights_ you _consider important. But yes, I’m asking questions that I already know the answers to, she’s important enough to you that she featured prominently in what I saw._ ”

“ _Then you saw what she did to us! To me!_ ”

“ _Yes. But Ahsoka, just what kind of pressure must she have been under for the loyal and valiant Jedi you knew to be twisted into ... that? And no one saw the warning signs that must have been there — not the masters, not the Jedi and troopers she fought alongside ... not the friends that knew her best. Not you_.

“ _Think about it_.”

Ahsoka barely noticed as her bondmate finally let herself slip into slumber, so stunned was she by Jenni’s last statement. She only came to herself when a concerned Padme gently shook her shoulder, to find she’d come to a stop in the middle of the street. She quickly excused her sudden inattention to a passing thought, and they resumed their walk to the ship.

But she did think about it, as she called up Defenate onboard _Life’s Gift_ for the nav-chart for the jump to Milagro. She thought about it during the meal Padme and Aja prepared from the luxurious stores with which a grateful Queen Apailana had stocked the skiff. Her mind kept cycling back to it as she and Padma told the stories of their lives since they’d last seen each other. While she recorded a message for her former master.

And in the end, after she'd reluctantly said goodbye and was walking down the ship’s ramp to return to the infirmary and her own healing trance to get rid of the last of the bone-deep ache from Jenni’s accidental assault, she turned back to face her friend. “Padme, could you take another message back for me? For Barriss Offee? I’d like you to deliver it to her personally.”


	12. On the Road Again

Jenni walked into the infirmary, toweling her still damp hair after her shower to clean away the bacta residue. (Ahsoka had insisted on wiping off most of the excess first, just as Jenni had done for her, and if her touch hadn’t been as ... experienced ... as Jenni’s it had still had her purring as she got in the shower.)

Ghent straightened from where he’d been leaning against the wall. Jenni’s eye widened when Cort stood up from the medtech’s normal seat, but before she had the chance to say anything Ahsoka spoke up from where she sat on the patient’s bed.

“What took so long?”

Jenni grimaced. “You would not _believe_ how many times I had to wash my hair to get the bacta-stink out of it.”

Ahsoka laughed, one hand rising to stroke a short, white, blue-striped lek lying across her shoulder and down along her chest. “Another reason to be happy to be a member of a species that doesn’t have hair.”

“ _Oh, it has its uses. It makes a nice handhold during sex._ ” Jenni flashed Ahsoka a memory of Henrik’s head pinned between her thighs with her hands buried in his fiery locks, holding his mouth against her burning cleft as her hips bucked, and laughed when the blue of Ahsoka’s lekku brightened at her unspoken response. Taking mercy on her Bonded, she turned to the slicer to find him watching the exchange with one eyebrow cocked. “Cort, I have to say I’m surprised to find you here. Didn’t Ahsoka get in touch to get the details about what you told me while I was in the bacta tank?”

“Yes, she did. But while I don’t think there’s any danger of another one of the ... Sith Lord’s minions showing up any time soon, I want to go with you when you leave. Oh, and don’t worry about anyone showing up too quickly. Even if the Senator hands over the nav-data at Milagro like she’s supposed to I have a worm in their systems that’ll wipe the data, it’ll be as if it was never there.”

It was all Jenni could do to keep her own eyebrows from rising. _Sith Lord? Ahsoka_ has _been talking with him_. And from the Marshal’s start of surprise, she hadn’t told him. She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, and refocused on Cort. “He won’t need to send any minions, once he finds out what happened to the one he sent all he’ll need to do is let the Bounty Hunter’s Guild know where Ahsoka is and they’ll come swarming in.”

Having managed to fight down her blush as the discussion turned serious, Ahsoka spoke up. “If he learns that much, he’ll also learn that I told Padme that we wouldn’t be staying.”

“ _Nice phrasing, not letting Ghent know how certain it is our Sith Lord will learn everything Padme knows_.”

“ _It’s as you told me when you kept me from telling Padme about the Chancellor, if he can’t do anything about it all telling him will do is paint an even bigger target on our backs if he’s forced to give up what he knows._ ” Ahsoka was _not_ happy about that, and Jenni knew why — if any other Void Slaves showed up, Ghent’s questioning would be extremely painful and almost certainly lethal. And they couldn’t stay to protect him, along with the rest of Trey’s inhabitants.

But Cort was shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter if I’m still safe, I’ve been hiding here long enough. With Ian dead, it’s time to move on.”

_But not necessarily with us_. Though now that Jenni thought about it, who else did he have to go with? It wasn’t like there was an abundance to free traders dropping by — in fact, with Ian dead there wasn’t likely to be any. _We’re going to have to go through Milagro, have Cort shut down his worm, and pass on the_ good _charts along with word that Trey’s market is open. If we don’t, who knows when the next free trader will show up. Unless_ — “Ahsoka, have you gotten onto the Hunter’s ship?”

Ahsoka shook her head. “I tried, but the Force warned me off and I don’t know enough to even recognize the traps, much less disarm them. We’re going to have to blow up the ship in place before we leave.”

“So much for that idea.” Jenni sighed, realized she’d been standing in place since noticing Cort’s presence, and stepped over to sit down beside Ahsoka, Cort sitting down as well and Ghent leaning back against the wall. “All right, Cort, we can at least get you off the planet. But after that you’re safer making your own way, with all the bounty hunters we’re too much of a target.”

/\

In the end, Ahsoka and Jenni placed the mining charges all over the Hunter’s ship, while sharpshooters with blaster rifles around the ship kept a watch for the automated anti-personnel blasters common to smugglers and bounty hunters’ ships. Nothing popped up (or down, as the case may be), though the Force warned Ahsoka off from several places that she suspected were hidden access ports. (When it occurred to Ahsoka to ask, Jenni explained that she wasn’t so much warned off as guided by the feel of the currents of the Tao.)

Once Ahsoka and Jenni were safely away and the mining charges set off, the resulting explosion collapsed a few of the closest houses and left a good-sized crater. Some form of self-destruct mechanism must have been triggered, because the miners that had brought the explosives swore they hadn’t brought enough for _that_.

But it was done, and as Ahsoka watched the lights of the starscape stretch into lines and vanish into the roiling gray of hyperspace she felt an eagerness that she had been missing since she’d walked away from the Order. As horrible as the war had often been, her actions in defense of the Republic has _mattered_. The fight for survival since had not been enough to lift what she now recognized as a deep depression ... if anything, that lonely struggle had strengthened it. Only first her concern for Jenni and then their glorious Bonding had relieved it, she felt the last vestiges of that depression fade away as she once again set off on a mission in the Republic’s defense. Even the way the Force had returned to the murky mistiness that she’d known all her life as soon as they’d left Trey-space (or rather, Terra-space, since Ghent told them just before they left that an overwhelming majority of its inhabitants had voted to adopt the original name) couldn’t dampen her spirits.

The shock she’d felt from Jenni, though ...

She set the alarm and was unbuckling the seat belts she had automatically latched even though there was zero chance of combat, when she heard Jenni say, “So, Cort, you aren’t going to want to be dropped off, are you?” Turning her seat, she found that as she had been lifting off and setting course for Milagro the slicer had entered _Life’s Gift_ ’s cockpit and was seated behind her. And she hadn’t noticed. _I’m going to have to ask Jenni to teach me her constant awareness of everyone’s emotions around her. Battlefield awareness and the Force’s warnings of danger are fine, but I’ll take the problems she says she has with large crowds over being caught unaware when I’m_ not _in danger — not all dangers are immediate_.

Ahsoka ignored Cort’s reply to focus on her Bonded, the white around Jenni’s lips and eyes matching the shakiness Ahsoka was picking up through their bond. She was just about to ‘say’ something through their link, when —

“— the Chancellor, aren’t you?”

She instantly switched her attention back to Cort, focusing on him through the Force. Jenni wasn’t in any immediate danger, and this ... “Cort, are you _certain_ Chancellor Palpatine is the hidden Sith Lord the Order has been worried about since finding Anakin ... Skywalker? I mean, he’s been so friendly, supportive. He’s practically Anakin’s _patron_ , has been since Anakin joined the Order.”

Cort shrugged. “I don’t know anything about a Sith Lord, I thought they were centuries extinct. But yes, it’s the Chancellor that’s behind the war ... _both_ sides of the war. And you _are_ going after him, aren’t you?”

There was a predatory hunger behind his quiet question, and Ahsoka silently asked, “ _What do we tell him? You_ are _sensing what I am, right?_ ”

Rather than answer her Bonded, Jenni asked, “And why do you care? With Ahsoka being hunted, I’d think you’d want to stay as far away from us ... and him ... as possible.”

Cort’s lips tightened, his hunger turning angry. “Because he _owes_ me — for a year on the run, years hiding on that backwater hole —” For a moment his hunger turned into amusement, his lips quirking. “— however historically significant that backwater has turned out to be.” The moment of levity was fleeting, however. “He owes me for the loss of all the savings me and Ian had managed to accumulate, for Ian’s death. No offence, but if we hadn’t been hunted he wouldn’t have been killed in that bar.”

There wasn’t any way to respond to the implicit statement that Cort would rather Ahsoka had died than his friend that wouldn’t sound selfish, so Ahsoka just glanced over at Jenni.

Jenni gazed back for a moment, then looked back at Cort. “And how can you help us deal with him?”

“When I sliced the Chancellor’s files, the first thing I did, before I was discovered, was create a back door. I never bothered to go back in, with the signal lag over galactic distances ...” He shrugged. “But if I’m actually on Coruscant the lack of lag time should allow me to seize control of the files, at least long enough to copy everything. I won’t be able to do that without setting off all kinds of alarms, through, so after that we could take refuge in the Jedi Temple. We give everything to them, and let _them_ deal with him.”

“Hmmm.” Jenni glanced over at her Bonded. “ _‘Soka?_ ”

Ahsoka felt a warmth blossom in her heart at what was apparently becoming her nickname — unlike her former master’s ‘Snips’ there was no gentle mockery involved — but forced herself to focus. Though she’d had _Life’s Gift_ ’s quarters altered so she and Jenni could share a room ... and a bed ... _Focus!_ She ‘sent’ back, “ _That’s better than what I could come up with. All I had was to go to the Order with what we’d learned, and hope even without proof they’d take us seriously enough to investigate themselves — they_ do _owe me, after all, and some of them might even recognize that. The only alternative I could see was to attack him, force him to defend himself with the Force, as a Sith Lord he would be tainted by his connection to the Void and easily detectible from the Temple. But ..._ ”

“ _But that could go wrong any number of ways_.” Jenni sighed and leaned back in her seat. “All right, Cort, you’re in, with one change — instead of taking what you get to the Order, you dump it straight into the hyperwave. You can do that, right?” At a stunned Cort’s jerky nod, she continued, “Good, after the way the Jedi Council treated Ahsoka I don’t trust them, so we take the decision out of their hands. _Then_ we go to the Order, after that we’ll probably need their protection — Palpatine will have more important things to worry about than us, but Void Slaves are vindictive bastards.

“But you’re going to be with us for awhile, because we’re going to have to wait.” At the other two’s questioning looks, she shrugged. “From the news, it looks like the Republic’s on its way to winning. If we go in right now, destabilize the Republic’s leadership, who knows how long we’ll be extending the killing? Besides, we’ll need to figure out some way to get onto Coruscant without being detected. There _is_ some way to track individual ships?”

Ahsoka and Cort both nodded. “Yes, by the emissions of the sublight drives,” Ahsoka said. “But I can take care of that once we leave Milagro, alter the drive’s performance enough to register as a different ship.”

“And I have a false ship’s ID,” Cort added. “Get me within range of a hyperwave transceiver, and Republican port authorities will even recognize us by the false ID. Still, once we get that all set up, are you sure you want to wait? If Palpatine’s started his end game, he must have some plan already in place for taking down the Order once the Republic has won. Striking after victory is certain but before he makes his move ... that’ll be a tricky piece of timing.”

Suddenly, in spite of everything — her months on the run and near death; _Jenni’s_ near death; the years of pain and suffering that had preceded that, all of them dancing to a Sith Lord’s tune; the feel of the shroud of the Dark Side that was twisting her gut and still had Jenni white — Ahsoka found herself laughing a wave of optimism swept over her. “We’re the Youxia Bond. If there’s anything we excel at, it’s timing!”


	13. Breakthrough

As she stepped out of her ship into the Jedi Temple’s landing bay, Padme smiled at the sight of the figure waiting for her — a tiny, wrinkled, green figure in Jedi robes, braced on his walking stick. She was actually somewhat surprised to see him, considering how busy the Council was and that when she had requested permission to land she had also stated that she had no official business. She had decided to come straight to the Temple, rather than return first to her duties (and formal dresses, she was _much_ happier in the simple but stylish bodysuit she currently wore) and find an excuse to visit officially.

Yoda spoke as she approached. “Happy, you are. A success your search was, then, for our missing Padawan?”

“Yes, it was, though she didn’t come back with me.” She dropped to one knee, to place herself closer to his height. “And she’s no longer your Padawan, and isn’t going to be again — there wasn’t much of chance of that when she left, and from what I saw there is zero chance now.” Padme remembered the young Human woman in the bacta tank, and had to fight to keep from smiling. _If not for the reason you’re thinking_.

And Master Yoda _was_ thinking it, his ears drooping as his eyes fell. “Poorly handled, that was,” he murmured. “Very poorly.”

“Yes, it was.” Padme reached into the pocket on her bodysuit’s chest, pulled out a chip. “She did give me a message to deliver, though.”

“Did she? Happy young Skywalker will be to see it.”

“It isn’t for Knight Skywalker.” His message was verbal, and private. “It’s for Barriss Offee.”

“For young Offee?” Yoda’s eyes widened, his ears lifting. “Know you the content?”

“Yes, I watched as Ahsoka recorded it.”

Yoda examined her for a long moment, then slowly nodded. “Very well. Give it to me, and deliver it I will.”

“No. I promised Ahsoka I would deliver it personally. She has little trust in the Order right now.”

Yoda sighed, but nodded. “Escort you I will.”

/\

Barriss Offee was having a bad day, gray and dull ... another in a neverending series of bad days. She went about her shift in the Temple’s medcenter in a haze, outwardly ignoring the sharp looks and widened eyes of the patients that recognized her. Acknowledging the distrust would interfere with her duties, and it was no more than she deserved. She almost wished she had been able to hold on to her delusions about the Order’s responsibility for the war in the face of her former Master’s relentless logic ... almost.

Looking back she couldn’t pinpoint when she had become a murderer.

The point when she had set her feet upon that path was easy enough — the Clone Trooper on Santive III whose nickname she’d never learned. (She’d avoided using the Clone Troopers’ alpha-numeric designations as much as possible.) He’d been dying under her hands in spite of all she could do, and in spite of all she could do she’d burned with anger and hatred of the war and those driving it — those _responsible_ for one more drop in the sea of death she swam in — and in that anger and hatred she’d found the strength she needed to save his life. She’d recognized afterward where that strength had come from, of course, but it had _worked!_ The Clone Trooper had _lived!_ And so she had reached for that anger and hatred again ... and again ... until she’d lost count of the number times ... the number of lives she had saved.

Oh yes, she had no trouble recognizing when she had first turned to the Dark Side, she just couldn’t remember when she had started blaming _the Order_ for all the pain and death surrounding her. When she had ceased to be a _healer_.

And now, everyone treated her as carefully (she couldn’t really say _gently_ ) as a spun-glass Ashanki goblet, or avoided her like a plague-carrier. She wasn’t allowed access to sharp tools even when she ate, and her lightsaber was locked away.

And they wouldn’t allow to interact with the younglings.

_After the way I betrayed everything my master believes in, framed Ahsoka, and murdered Tutso and the others, why should they?_

“ _Barriss, you have a visitor._ ”

Barriss looked up at her master’s announcement over the meditation chamber’s mic — one of the younglings’ meditation chambers, that along with the mic had a camera so that teachers could observe and offer advice while maintaining the illusion of privacy. It had been assigned to her for a rather different reason, of course.

But ... a visitor? Who could possibly want to visit _her_? Why?

 _Does it matter? It isn’t like I’m accomplishing anything here_. She uncurled from her lotus position and rose to her feet. “I’m ready.”

The door slid open, and Barriss was surprised to see Senator Amidala standing there with a tiny projector in her hand. The Senator stepped into the room, and the door slid shut behind her. “Barriss Offee, I just got back from a trip to the Outer Rim, looking for Ahsoka.” She offered Barriss the projector. “Ahsoka sent you a message.”

A message? From _Ahsoka?_ Barriss reached out for the tablet with a hand beginning to tremble. _Ahsoka hates me ... she_ must _hate me. What could she possibly have to say to me?_ Whatever it was it couldn’t be pleasant. But Barriss deserved whatever invective her former friend heaped on her, and she steeled herself as she touched the button on the screen.

A small holographic image of the young Togrutan sprang up from the tablet. For several long second that image stared silently at her, then began to speak. “This is my fourth attempt at this. Each one has gotten shorter, and this will be the shortest yet. So, here goes.” She paused, her chest lifting with a deep breath. “Since I learned what you did, I’ve had to release so much anger ... so much _hate_ ... into the Force — anger and hate, not just for the dead, but for the way you betrayed me personally. But a new ... friend ... pointed something out to me that I hadn’t thought of — that the Jedi I knew ... the _friend_ I knew ... would never have done such a thing. And that there had to have been signs, signs of your descent into the Dark Side, and signs of the desperation that had to have driven the Jedi and friend I knew to do it. Signs that we ... that _I_ ... missed completely. I failed you, and I am very, very sorry.”

The hologram vanished, and Barriss stared at the projector in her palm, her mind awash in a chaotic swirl. _She’s sorry? She’s_ sorry _? After what I did,_ She’s _sorry?_ She dropped to her knees, projector falling from her hand as she was wracked by sobs.

A moment later she felt the Senator’s arms circle around her.

/\

Jedi Master Luminara Unduli sighed as she switched off the screen showing Barriss clutching at the Senator holding her as she broke down, then chuckled ruefully. (The audio was still on but at least Luminara could give Barriss _some_ privacy, since she clearly wasn’t a threat to her visitor.) “Trust Ahsoka to make us look bad _again_. And once again, we have no one to blame but ourselves.”

Standing on the seat next to her, Yoda hummed. “Responsible for her own actions, your former Padawan is.”

“I didn’t say she isn’t. For that matter, _Ahsoka_ didn’t say she isn’t. But she’s right, the signs had to be there ... thinking back, they _were_ there, and we didn’t see them for what they were. We were too _busy_. And now, here we are.”

“Here we are,” Yoda agreed. “And another question, it raises because right in one way, young Barriss was: soldiers, we are not; generals we should _not_ be. Feel as Knight Offee what other knights do? What other warning signs missed have we?”

Luminara sighed again, leaning back in her own seat. She was grateful to the ancient Grand Master for his subtle acknowledgement that, whatever she had done, Barriss was still one of theirs, but also accepted the change of subject. “Not a pleasant thought. The years after the end of the war will not be easy ones, as all of us — Masters, Knights, and Padawans — grapple with what we had to do to restore peace to the Republic. But at least now the end is in sight.”

“The end, yes. The beginning of the hunt for the Sith behind the war, behind the shadow that lies over the Force, also yes.”

Luminara kept her surprise off her face. Not at the mention of the Sith, Count Dooku and his apprentice Asajj Ventress were proof enough of that. But ... “Considering how long the influence of the Shroud has been growing, that would mean that Dooku wasn’t corrupted by a trove of Sith writings — perhaps a holocron of an ancient Sith Dark Lord. That he had a living master.”

“Yes, means that it does.”

For a moment Luminara was tempted to ask if the rest of the Jedi Council agreed with the Grand Master, but chose to let it go. That was an issue for later, after all, they had more than enough problems to deal with now ... as Yoda had said, it was a matter they could focus on in a few months when the war as won. She glanced at the blank screen as she listened to her former Padawan’s wails of pain. “Perhaps now Barriss will finally be able to stop punishing herself with her grief and self-loathing and release them into the Force.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, for Barriss's redemption — however it happened, in canon she was sufficiently trusted to once more be serving in the field by the time of Order 66, though her final mission was to prevent a plot to poison Felucia's water supply and so perhaps she wasn't actually assigned a combat role. So here's my version of part of the process, stay tuned for what else comes.
> 
>  **Tutso:** Tutso Mara trained with Barriss, showing her how to properly hold a lightsaber. He was one of those killed by the bomb Barriss helped engineer.


	14. Breaking the Trail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I missed a week. My writing routine now is to write during work breaks on weekdays and finish up the chapter on the weekend — and last weekend I was too busy to write. Then during the week I changed my mind twice so that I ended up adding to three chapters in two different stories. At any rate, here it is, enjoy.

Ahsoka stepped into _Life’s Gift_ ’s cockpit, unsurprised to find her Bonded still there practicing setting up hyperspace jumps with the nav-comp. The ‘feeling’ of Jenni in the back of her mind had taken a ... studious? ... edge before Ahsoka had left on her check-up of their ship, and it hadn’t changed during the hours she’d been gone. (She really should have made that tour before they left Terra rather than trust the technicians that had worked on the ship while she’d been occupied with first Jenni, then the Hunter, then Jenni again, but with Padme taking word of her location back to Coruscant they’d been pushed for time.)

Jenni looked up from the  co-pilot’s controls (carefully locked, along with the rest) and smiled at Ahsoka. “So what had you so confused?”

Ahsoka dropped into the pilot’s seat. “When was I confused?”

“About ...” Jenni glanced at the digital chronometer set into the wall. “ ... two hours ago. There were a few points when you were definitely less than happy, though not worried, but confusion concerns me more. Kind of like hearing ‘what’s that?’ from a surgeon.”

Ahsoka giggled as she thought back over the path of her tour, then remembered. “Right, the hold. Defenate said you told her to install that new lining and move those crates herself, rather than have the technicians do it. She was rather put out with you, even if her new body is more capable than the usual protocol droid they aren’t usually cargo handlers or drivers.” When it had come time to provide a body for Defenate’s head to be attached to, Jenni had suggested that any droid hanging around them needed some upgrades just to survive and Ahsoka couldn’t disagree.

It was Jenni’s turn to giggle. “And I’m sure she was all prim and proper while complaining. Protocol droids aren’t much good at ranting, are they? But the hold ... the boxes are full of crystals from the Mountain, and the lining prevents them from being noticed by any other Dancers that might be around if we take any out of their boxes.”

Ahsoka shook her head, smiling at the feeling of anticipation coming through their bond. “Don’t you mean ‘when’? What are you up to?”

“I suppose that _is_ what I mean, and you’re getting better at reading me,” Jenni said with a grin. “Give it a few months, and I won’t be able to keep any secrets from you at all. As for what I’m up to …” Though her grin didn’t change, her mood darkened. “Let me introduce you to _the_ biggest matter of internal debate among the Youxia Bonds.”

“Even bigger than whether the Tao is a tool of God, or _is_ God?” Ahsoka asked breathlessly, eyes going wide, and was rewarded by a surprised laugh from her Bonded ... a _real_ laugh, accompanied by a lightening of the metaphorical weight on her shoulders.

“Oh, yes, _much_ bigger! The God question was just something to fill up time, with no way to answer it. _This_ actually affected how the Bonded acted. You remember how I told you that completely merging with the current of the Tao can be chancy, because where the current wants to sweep you isn’t always where you want to go. But some of the Bonds suggested that the chance of that happening would be reduced if you set up the proper conditions first. Other Bonds considered that to be heretical, a rejection of the fundamental principle of going with the Flow.”

Ahsoka’s mind flashed back to their fight with the Hunter, Jenni taking blaster bolts to her back and chest, dropping as her presence in the Force vanished, only her muted presence in Ahsoka’s mind letting her know her Bonded was still alive but had merged with ‘the current of the Tao’ ... and how she’d been able to kill that hunter with ease, because _he_ had thought she was dead. “That was what you did during the fight. So you’re in the first camp?”

“Actually, I’m mostly in the second camp. Getting too wedded to altering the future to suit yourself is ... problematic. But I’m not fanatical about it, so I’m going to be setting up a trap in the hold for any other Hunters we encounter, just in case. But that’s for later, and —” Her gaze shifted to the chronometer again and back. “— we’re just about to come out of hyperspace, so it’s time for me to get out of your way.”

“Yes, it is, time for you to get into the ventral gun turret.” Ahsoka slid into the pilot’s seat, buckled in, and put on her headset. She waited until Jenni had shut down the nav-comp and the cockpit’s door closed behind her, on her way to the gun turret that Ahsoka shown her and explained (muttering something about getting some use out of a misspent youth), then unlocked the controls and flipped the switch for the com to the second crew quarters that Cort had used during his and Ian’s escape from their own pursuers. “Cort, we’re about to exit. Whatever you’re doing with the computers, it’s time to shut it down and get to the dorsal gun.”

“ _Acknowledged_ ,” the slicer answered back, and Ahsoka flipped off the com and settled back in her chair as the ready lights for the ventral gun lit up. A few minutes later the ready lights for the dorsal gun came on, along with its com: “ _All green here_.”

“Good, we’re just about clear.” Ahsoka had one hand on the ship’s controls and a finger on the switch to free the controls to the guns, ready in case they were ambushed. She _really_ hoped they weren't, they wanted to leave everyone in Milagro thinking Ahsoka was alone.  _Six ... five ... four ... three ... two ... one ..._

The roiling gray-white murkiness of hyperspace flashed into streaks of stars settling into their proper places, and Ahsoka gaze shifted to the scope ... nothing, or at least no other ships close enough to be a threat. Not that she’d been _expecting_ any, not on the heading coming in from the planet formerly known as Trey, but if another pack of bounty hunters had come after her they might have split up, leaving someone behind just in case she and they crossed in hyperspace.

But it looked like they were in the clear, and she flipped another com switch before beginning the calculations for a jump to Bacrana. “Milagro flight control, this is Free Trader _Riptide_. Please respond, over.” She winced at the formality, she doubted the flotsam and jetsam of the galaxy used military precision. Not that it mattered in this case, but she’d have to watch that going forward.

“ _Free Trader_ Riptide _, this is Milagro Flight Control. Please state your destination_.”

“I’m just passing through, but I have some mail for you. The free trader servicing Trey has died, so what passes for a government there asked me to drop off his nav-charts for the run to Trey and to ask you to pass along the word to other free traders that the route’s open. They included a list of goods they regularly buy.” _And the neo-nerf steak is unbelievable_ , she almost added. But in spite of the new findings that Jenni had been able to guide those crazy archeologists to, they’d still decided to keep their heads down at least until things in the rest of the galaxy had settled down.

“ _Very well, Riptide, we are ready to receive your transmission_.”

“Sending.” She hit the button to send the data packet on its way.

“ _Data received, and ... it looks good_.”

“Then I’m out of here. You have a nice life.”

“ _Likewise, Riptide. You are cleared for departure_.”

Ahsoka flipped off the com, then when the nav-comp’s screen lit up with its results steered _Fate’s Gift_ onto the indicated heading. She doubted that any bounty hunters or Darksiders ( _Void Slaves_ , she could hear Jenni’s voice saying that, she rather liked that label) would be fooled by her course coreward along the Corellian Run, especially since Bacrana was also on another minor trade route running spinward and trailing, but it wasn’t like she knew where they would be going, anyway.

Five minutes later, she dropped them out of hyperspace and flipped on the coms. “Jenni, we’re clear, it’s —” The door behind her slipped open and her Bonded stepped in. “— your turn.”

/\

Ahsoka glanced back as the cockpit door slid open, and Cort stepped in, his nose wrinkling at the stench of vomit and disinfectant. He glanced at Jenni, sitting in the co-pilot seat with her hand on the nav-comp’s controls and her eyes closed, then sat in the seat behind Ahsoka in the pilot’s seat. He murmured, “What’s going on?”

“Jenni’s trying to program a destination,” Ahsoka quietly replied.

“Really? Is it a Force thing?”

“Not for Jedi, at least not this completely. She’s adapting a technique her own people came up with.”

“So what’s the hold-up? It’s been almost an hour.”

“It’s —” Ahsoka broke off as Jenni twisted to the side and tried to vomit into the bucket between them. She didn’t have much success, her stomach already empty from previous attempts.

Ahsoka laid a gentle hand on Jenni’s arm. (She was finding that in spite of their mental connection — or perhaps _because_ of it — she had gotten more ‘touchy-feely’ since they’d Bonded.) “Jenni, this isn’t working. In fact ... should we go back to Terra?”

Cort looked between the two women. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s some sort of shroud fueled by the Dark Side over the Force,” Ahsoka explained, now rubbing a hunched over Jenni’s back. “I’ve never known a time it wasn’t there, gotten ... desensitized, I guess. Didn’t even realize how bad it’s gotten over the last few years, until I visited Terra — for some reason the Shroud doesn’t reach there, I was amazed how clean I felt. But Jenni was never exposed to it until we left.”

“It’s not that,” Jenni disagreed, straightening with a grateful smile for her Bonded that Ahsoka felt through their link. “Sure, I felt like I’d been dipped in slime after we left Earth ... Terra. But I can live with that, the problem is that I’m trying to merge with the current of the Tao — the Force — and this ‘shroud’ is in the way. It’s like a ... a riptide trying to sweep me into the Void. I’m all right as long as I don’t _use_ the tide, try to swim with it, but that tide is the only one I can use while I’m in it.”

Ahsoka frowned. “That can’t be right. I mean ... yeah, from what I’ve heard looking into the future, receiving guidance from the Force has become more difficult over the years, but there’s still a _few_ visions.”

“Are there? Or are all of you seeing whatever Palpatine _wants_ you to see?”

Ahsoka felt herself go lightheaded with shock as that question hammered into her. “Jenni, Jedi _depend_ on those visions! I mean, we ... they don’t seek guidance for every step, but if you’re right ...”

Jenni nodded grimly. “Then you’ve been dancing at the end of Palpatine’s strings for years.”

“We have to warn them!”

“Maybe, I just wish ...” Jenni sighed. “Even if we didn’t seek out visions the Youxia were even more dependent on the currents of the Tao to sweep us where they would than you Jedi, and it isn’t like I was exactly high up in our ranks however powerful I was! Why are _we_ the ones in the hot seat?”

“Maybe because we were on Terra, where the shroud, veil, whatever, doesn’t reach?” Ahsoka suggested.

“Then why did we need to leave, if it’s only on Earth ... Terra ... that we can trust the currents?” Jenni asked. “And leaving _was_ the right move — it _felt_ right!”

“Hold on, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves,” Cort cautioned. “Focus on our problem _right now_ , leave the rest for later. So, aren’t you two linked? Jenni, can’t you draw on your tie to Ahsoka to, I don’t know, ‘push’ yourself through? Does that even make sense?”

The two Bonded exchanged glances. “Maybe?” Jenni replied. “It isn’t something that I know of any Youxia trying, we ride the currents rather than create our own. Ahsoka?”

The Togrutan shrugged. “I haven’t heard of anyone ... feeding, I guess ... the Force to someone else through a bond, either. But it’s worth a try.”

The two settled back in their seats and Ahsoka closed her eyes, focusing on the comforting ‘feel’ of Jenni’ presence in the back of her mind. There was a discordant mix of uncertainty and determination ... and then Ahsoka knew that Jenni had again ‘dove’ into the ‘riptide’ she’d described, the _foulness_ Ahsoka felt through the link making her want to retch. But she struggled through it as she tried to ‘reach’ into herself for the strength her floundering Bonded needed, to somehow ‘push’ it into her presence — and as if _something_ flipped a switch ... no, pulled a lever ... it was like a flood gate had opened up, strength from deep within herself pouring through the link to Jenni. Jenni’s awe came back ‘up’ the link like a triumphant shout — and just as suddenly it seemed as if a plate of grayish, translucent glass cut through the link. Ahsoka could still sense Jenni’s presence through that ‘glass’, but it was muted and distant as it had been during their fight with the Hunter, and the strength that she had been feeding into her Bonded ‘splashed’ against the new barrier. Her eyes flew open to find herself twisted in her seat and Jenni’s hands flashing across the nav-comp’s keys.

“It worked?” She twisted to look at Cort behind her. He continued, “From the way you spasmed I _hope_ it worked.”

“It worked,” Ahsoka agreed, sucking in a shuddering breath. “She wasn’t kidding about being dipped in slime, that was _foul_. But she got through.”

“So where are we going?”

Ahsoka turned back and leaned over so she could see the nav-comp’s screen, and her eyes widened. “Dantooine.”

“Dantooine? Where have I heard that name before?”

“Jedi Master Mace Windu won a battle there.”

“ _That_ Dantooine? But that’s all the way across the Republic! It’ll take _months_ to get that far without following the trade routes, and there’s no way to do it in a single jump without getting yanked out of hyperspace by some star’s gravity shadow if we don’t fly right into it!”

But Ahsoka had been watching the text scrolling up the screen as Jenni’s fingers continued to fly across the keyboard. “Maybe not. She isn’t just entering the destination, she’s programming the _route_.”

The two Republic natives exchange a glance with eyes filled with awe, then turned to stare at the time-lost newcomer.

Jenni's mental ‘giggles’ echoed in the back of Ahsoka’s mind.


	15. There Goes My Life

Padme looked up as the door signaled a new customer entering Dex’s Diner, and smiled when she saw Anakin. She hadn’t realized he was back, but this was one of their locations for ‘accidental’ meetings in public. He couldn’t exactly invite himself to her apartments, but if a couple of old friends met and one invited the other home so they could catch up in private, who would care? And it wasn’t like he could invite her to the Jedi Temple, that _would_ raise eyebrows — fortunately for them one friend inviting another into her home was one thing, a Jedi inviting a Senator into the Temple quite another. So, the diner, and she suspected a no longer needed message sitting in an anonymous mail account. (Of course they had to regularly drop in when the other _wasn’t_ there, or their meetings wouldn’t look so accidental. But the food was good, if simple, so that was all right and the simplicity was even a good excuse as a nice change of pace from elaborate banquets and dances.)

She called out, “Knight Skywalker, I didn’t realize you were back, when did you get in?”

He looked around, found her, and bowed extravagantly. “At your service, my Lady.” He straightened to chuckles from some of the other customers, and continued, “I got in a few hours ago. I’ve just finished reporting to the Council, and thought I would get some _real_ food.”

“What, the Temple doesn’t feed you properly?”

“Oh, it feeds us all properly, all healthy and properly balanced. It just doesn’t feed us _well_. And the less said about army rations the better.” He walked across the room to join her, accompanied by additional laughter, and dropped into the seat across from her. He quickly placed his order in the table’s built-in pad (not that the cook probably hadn’t already started, he always ordered the same stew), looked up at Padme, and his gaze sharpened. When she smiled back and mouthed ‘later’ he subtly nodded. “So, while I was out crawling through mud and trying to figure out how to use the Force for something as petty as convincing the local insect-equivalent not to eat me alive, what galaxy-shaking legislation have you been working on in the Senate?”

/\

In her own seat several tables away, Aja shook her head before turning her attention to her own plate — now that Anakin was here, she could relax from the alertness her unofficial duty as Padme’s bodyguard demanded ... a bit, at least.

After a couple mouthfuls of nerf steak, she unobtrusively glanced around the room and had to keep from shaking her head again. She didn’t know why Jedi and Senators were so blind, but the pair weren’t fooling anyone in _this_ restaurant. But then, the regulars here saw more of the pair together than most Jedi and hangers-on around the Senate chambers. Still, all the expressions she could see were approving or even amused, so she doubted word would be leaking out any time soon. The public did like its heroes, and for once that regard was warranted and even useful.

She turned her attention back to her own meal.

/oOo\

As soon as her apartment door closed behind them, Padme was in Anakin’s arms, her lips pressed to his. For a long moment the two simply luxuriated in each other’s presence and the relief of being able to drop their public façade. They were both quite used to C-3PO by now, and simply ignored his exclamation on seeing his creator.

Finally, they broke apart and Anakin grinned, glancing toward the door to Padme’s bedroom. But first ... “So, what news do you have that you didn’t want to share at Dex’s?”

But Padme glanced over at C-3PO. “Threepio, don’t you need to shut down and recharge?”

“No, Mistress, I just ... oh.” Padme had glanced toward her bedroom door, and while ‘dense’ was his standard mode he wasn’t _completely_ hopeless. “Oh, yes, of course. I will be at the recharging station if you need me.”

Anakin was softly chuckling at the prim tone to C-3PO’s last statement, but waited until the protocol droid sat down at the recharge station and the glow in his visual receptors went out. “So what didn’t you want to tell me at the restaurant?”

 _I’m pregnant_. The words trembled on her lips, but she forced them back — right now, she wanted to _get laid_ , after the long weeks apart so would her husband (much of their best sex was after they’d been apart for awhile), and once she told him she doubted he’d be in the mood until he processed it.

So instead, she went with, “I saw Ahsoka.”

“You did? Where? How is she? Is she safe? Did she — ?”

Padme shut him up with a finger to his lips. “I found her on a backwater planet called Trey — actually, the Chancellor found her and passed the word — and she’s fine. More than fine, actually. Anakin, she knows about us.”

“She _does_?” Anakin asked, eyes widening. “Since when? How? Has she told anyone?”

By now Padme was holding back giggles, both at her husband’s reaction and at Ahsoka’s newfound ... expansion of her worldview. “Relax, she figured it out while we were talking. No, she hasn’t told anyone, and assured me she won’t. As for how ...” Now the giggles escaped for a moment. “I think she’s ... open to possibilities that you Jedi ignore. I think she’s taken a lover of her own.”

“A ... a lover?” Anakin groped for a chair beside a nearby table, and fell into it. “ _Ahsoka?_ Are you sure? He must be quite a man ... she never showed any ... any desire to ...”

Padme plopped herself onto his lap and snuggled against his chest. “Maybe because her lover must be quite a _woman_ , and a strikingly beautiful Human. And yes, I’m sure. I haven’t talked to Jenni myself, she was injured in a fight with a bounty hunter that caught up with Ahsoka, and in a bacta tank. But the way Ahsoka was looking at her, had her hand on the tank ... I called her on it and yes, they’re lovers.”

Anakin stared at the simple pattern on the wall, its supposedly soothing pattern lost on him, almost oblivious of his wife in his lap as he grappled with the revelation. “Wow ... wait, bounty hunter? This Jenni was in a bacta tank ... they didn’t come back with you?”

“No, they didn’t. Anni, someone’s put a price on Ahsoka’s head, she’s already been attacked by bounty hunters three times. Since she can’t ... or won’t ... seek the Order’s protection, for her Coruscant is one of the most dangerous places in the galaxy.”

“What!?” Anakin’s shock jerked him to his feet, only his quick grab saving Padme from hitting the floor. “Who!?”

“Sheev didn’t know.” Anakin turned toward the door, and Padme grabbed his arm. “Anakin, you _can’t_ — not search for whoever offered the bounty, not try to find Ahsoka. Sheev’s already investigating the first, do you think you have more resources than the Chancellor’s office? And right now, Ahsoka’s best protection is her relationship with Jenni; crechelings might believe the rumors about the rampant promiscuity of Jedi that leave the Order, bounty hunters will know better — they’ll see a young Togrutan in a relationship with a Human woman ... to the point that they’ll think Jenni dyed her hair to match Ahsoka’s lekku. But if _you_ show up ...”

For a long moment Anakin stood staring at the door, then turned away. Shrugging off her hand, he began to pace the length of the room, running his hands through his hair.

“She sent you a message — she said you need to watch your back as much as she does, not all our enemies are in front of us.” Padme had wondered if the message would mean more to Anakin than it had to her ... and if he would share ... but he simply nodded as he continued to pace. She suppressed a disappointed sigh. _I guess I’m not getting laid, after all. And since that’s the case_ ...

She stepped up to her pacing husband and wrapped her arms around him from behind, bringing him to a halt. Leaned her head against his shoulder, the murmured,  “You know, it’s funny, how Ahsoka figured out about us. The Marshal that met me when I landed said she was in the infirmary — scared the life out of me! — and when I burst in she’s standing by Jenni’s bacta tank with one hand on the transparisteel. She looks at me, and the first thing she says is ‘You’re pregnant. As much time as me and Sky Guy spent with you, when did you have time to have a secret romance?’ The next thing she says is ‘ _Anakin_ ’s the father?’ How did she know that?”

But she had felt Anakin stiffen halfway through her almost panicky rambling. “You’re pregnant?”

Her arms tightened their hold in him. “Yes, I’m pregnant.” _Please, let him take this the right way!_

He took her hands in his and pulled them away from him, turned so he could stare at her, eyes wide. “I’m going to be a father?”

“Yes, you’re going to be a father.” She waited for some additional response — _any_ additional response — from him, but he just stood there staring at her. Finally unable to bear the silence, with a voice that shook she said, “Anni, please, you’re scaring me.”

 _That_ jerked him free from his shock, and he fell back into a chair, running a hand through his hair as he grinned. “Wow, I’m going to be a father! How did _that_ happen?

“Oh, the usual way,” Padme said dryly as she plopped into his lap, trying to ignore the relief that almost had her shaking. And it _had_ been ‘the usual way’, she hadn’t needed the seed she’d siphoned out and stored, after all ... something she was eternally grateful for, and _never_ intended to tell her husband. (Not that she’d disposed of her ‘deposit’ — one thing the past over two years had made clear was that things happened in war, that sample be her only opportunity to have more children.) “So, do we wait until after the war to let everyone know about the twins? Or do the Big Reveal right now?” She had remembered Ahsoka’s words, and had thought about how best to handle it at every waking moment. (She’d also remembered Ahsoka’s use of the word ‘children’, and had confirmed it as soon as she could do so discreetly.)

“Twins?” Anakin’s grin actually widened.

“Yes, so start thinking about names for both sexes when you aren’t busy hunting Sith or winning battles. So how do we handle this?” She quickly ran through Ahsoka’s reasoning, regretfully killing his grin in the process ... now he just looked sick.

“Padme, the Order’s all I have, what will I do when they throw me out?”

At the word ‘when’, Padme felt a tense knot in her heart she hadn’t even realized existed — hadn’t _dared_ realize existed — come apart and vanish, leaving her lightheaded. Anakin had chosen her over the Order. He’d not only chosen her, he hadn’t even thought about it ... it hadn’t even been a _choice_. She wriggled on his lap, smiling inside at the inevitable result ... he might be in shock, but his _body_ wasn’t. _I don’t care how upset he is, he’s getting_ laid _tonight_. She leaned down and softly kissed him. His arms instinctively circled her waist, pulling her closer, the kiss deepening until when they finally broke apart she already felt like she was about to burst into flame, her nipples almost painfully tight. She whispered, “Let’s worry about that later. It’ll have to wait until after the war regardless, and they might not be so eager to throw our their 'hero with no fear'. And whatever happens you’ll always have me and our children. _Tonight_ , let’s celebrate.”

“Celebrate?” She wriggled again and his eyes widened, then he grinned and pulled her down into another kiss that left her gasping. As she caught her breath he easily rose to his feet with her in his arms. (From the extra support she felt and the light touch of his arms he was cheating, and she giggled at the thought of what the Council would think of such a ‘frivolous’ use of the Force.) “Yes,” he murmured in her ear as the door to her bedroom slid aside, “a celebration is definitely in order.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea if writers have come up with a different word for a see-through material harder than glass, or even steel, so if anyone knows of one other than "crystoplast" please let me know. EDIT: Thank you, DarthLocutus, for "transparisteel."
> 
> The chapter title comes from the song by Kenny Chesney. Not a perfect fit, but close.


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